Guys, I need your help working on confidence.

PLplotsOTS · 2011-12-16T21:42:43+00:00

I'm assuming you've read up on inner game and approach anxiety already. I'll try to find specific topics that might be more helpful for you, personally.

Here's my two cents:

DO NOT use alcohol as "liquid confidence." First of all, there's the whole issue where it becomes a reliance, and you don't want to go down that road. As it relates to game, drinking could go either way. Sometimes it loosens people up, lets them go crazy and be the life of the party. Or, it can eliminate their composure, make them spill whatever words come to mind and lose control over the situation (and the girl). I think you already know that, but I guess the moral of the story is to know your limits, figure out how alcohol affects your game, and use it to achieve the desired effect.
You sound like an awesome guy, and the only way to let the world know it is by being yourself.

thoughts like "they want me to leave" or "shes judging me" immediately invade my mind

Let's look at these as examples. "They want me to leave?" One, I doubt it. Two, if you're still concerned, read up on body language so you can tell when they're expressing IOI's and when they're turned off. Rely on concrete evidence instead of your subjective doubts. E.g. is she facing you or turned away? Making eye contact or looking around as if she's searching for somebody else / an escape?
"She's judging me?" Of course she is! That's what people do when they first meet. Don't worry about qualifying yourself to her. Remember, she's also being judged - by you. You'll both have a better time if you focus less on who's worthy of who and more on connecting and having a good time.

danxmason · 2011-12-17T00:35:29+00:00

Best confidence builders:

[Meditation](www.dhamma.org)
Gym
New clothes
Solid friendships
Practice

SloppyJoMo · 2011-12-16T21:11:45+00:00

[permanently deleted]

2011-12-16T22:07:50+00:00

No shortcuts. Pull the band-aid off.

Just go up to big mixed sets and open the dudes. Talk about w/e, the girls will come.

Also, booze is the enemy of sarging. I like to have maybe ONE drink, but I keep it to one drink an hour. Anyone who goes out with me knows I have like 2 cokes or waters for each real drink, and I fucking LOVE the sauce, but not when I'm sarging.

Otherwise, just read some courage wolf memes and get out there, tiger. Nothing to fear, strangers can't do anything to you that is worse than what you're already doing to yourself. When you get out there, you'll learn over time how little power anyone really has over you in life.

PyouA · 2011-12-16T22:45:14+00:00

When I was 20 I was pretty much the exact same way. I'm not speaking for you here, but at least in my case a lot of it was that I was concerned with how I was being perceived by others. A lot of people will tell you that everyone is way to concerned about themselves to even notice - there is a lot of truth to this, but even when I accepted this I still struggled. The problem with me was what some psychoanalysts call "the big other" - I was determining who I was by imagining how other perceive me.

So my fix (which was mostly by accident) was that we were having some people at our house for a pre-game and my roommate was talking up how good he was with chatting up girls at bars in an attempt to try and impress the girls that were there. Since it was after 5 or 6 rounds of speed quarters and I was liable to do anything, I decided that I would tell everyone that I was real good as well. Long story short: we were all at the bar and everyone was expecting me to approach a bunch of girls so I did. I couldn't break the image I created.

So a good way to overcome this is to throw a white lie at someone and say something like, "dude, last night I was just on fire talking to a bunch of girls - I need a good wingman tonight, you down?" or for a girl..."I never usually talk to strangers at bars/parties but I did last weekend and I was on fire, if I'm doing well with a girl tonight you have to come over and talk me up for a bit to help me out."

This way instead of being stuck in the frame of "I'm not the type of guy who talks to random girls" who are stuck in the other frame. You will probably be nervous, but in order to keep congruence and not look like an asshole you will have to actually talk to girls. This is a 180 from your state now where you avoid talking to girls because you don't want to be an asshole.

All it takes it to plant the seed outside of your manipulative and protecting ego (i.e. with your friends) that you are/are going to talk to girls. Then your ego will force you to act because you won't want to look like an idiot in front of your friends.

Try it out - worked wonders for me. Also works with other stuff - if you tell your parents and friends that you have gotten a bunch of really good grades back and have been working your ass off, chances are you will work harder in school so you don't break that image and become some flakeball. But yeah, definitely works well with girls, at least for me.

delinquentme · 2011-12-17T01:49:58+00:00

getting drunk != confidence

My confidence was a brute-force approach.

step1: approach so many women that when you get shot down ... it less of an issue

step2: repeat

eventually you learn to give up the fear and can begin to enjoy the convo...

ANOTHER THING: What do you enjoy?

2011-12-16T22:10:17+00:00

Get reference experience approaching. Go to a mall or store and ask for directions or the time, and then when you feel "Oh this is easy! I'm having fun!" try other approaches. Learn from the negative feedback, but don't dwell on it, delete the negative parts from your mind and just leave the awesome parts.

cryer · 2011-12-17T00:06:29+00:00

Just curious - did you used to be fat or have some kind of physical issue that you no longer have?

shivalry · 2011-12-17T05:53:39+00:00

Here's the best way to ease yourself into talking to people you want to talk to:

Start approaching strangers with "functional openers."

These are things like "Hey, my phone died. Do you have the time?", "Do you know where the nearest Starbucks is?", "Excuse me, did you happen to see the weather for today? I just need it to not rain because X." Time, location, weather questions.

Then, you can move on to situationally relevant opinion questions. "Looks like it's gonna rain hard in a minute, doesn't it?", [to people standing outside a store] "Hey, how is this place?", "Hey, do you think I could balance on that guy's fro?" [best addressed to attractive/well dressed girls], "Hey, do you know of any good men's clothing stores around here?" "Hey, excuse me but what do you think about these shoes? I just bought them/someone just disparaged them and I want a female opinion."

Then move on to talking about whatever you want once you have the confidence.

If that's too canned for you, too bad. You have to start somewhere. Canned doesn't have to be weird, nor sneaky, if you choose the right canned things. There's no replacement for experience.

peppermintcreams · 2011-12-16T21:09:09+00:00

First of all, in my experience most people are too wrapped up in their own s*** to judge you. How often do you actually judge people and act on it? An obvious response would be that drinking isn't the answer, however a couple of drinks (and something to hold) can take the edge off. Do make sure it is just a couple tho! Try some adversion therapy: tak to a stranger that you will never interact with again. Chat up the lady at the till in a shop, talk to a random at the bus stop etc. Hopefully it will give you a bit more faith in people! If your problem persists and you really don't think you are getting anywhere you could consider counselling as you may have a type of angoraphobia. I hope this helps!

helpmeimnotconfident · 2011-12-16T22:28:50+00:00

Just a question.

Is it only girls and how are you when you are in the spotlight?

Karaktor · 2011-12-16T22:49:35+00:00

This e-book helped me shake off some confidence issues. Hope you can find something in it to help.

avoutthere · 2011-12-17T00:15:08+00:00

What you have to work to ingrain in your subconscious is that nobody else's opinion of you has more validity than your opinion of yourself. If, as you say, you're reasonably good looking, you keep yourself clean, and you act in a civilized manner, anybody who condemns you is an asshole and should be disregarded as such.

FutureWolf-II · 2011-12-17T02:41:26+00:00

Dude I'm the same way until I get into a regular habit of working out. I start putting work into me, and it just kind of becomes obvious that any girl not interested clearly isn't worth my time. Joe Rogan has said something several times on his podcast along the lines of "be the man who you want to be." If you wanna be the confident guy, be him, who's stopping ya? And worse comes to worse, fake it till you make it brother. Also this is gonna sound weird, but start hitting up strip clubs. It's impossible to avoid small talk with broads there, and it's an easy training-grounds just to try out lines or jokes you'd want to bust out on girls at regular bars. And ya know what, you fuck up there as well it's okay, cause they're not really interested to begin with and you can toss a hundo at 'em and get a BJ at the end of the night regardless. First and foremost, start putting the work into yourself, that you deserve (whatever it may be).

MonkeySteriods · 2011-12-17T03:22:13+00:00

I think there's a reason why you [general term] may not be confident. I think that its because you don't realize how irrelevant it is to fail. Go out approach sets, try to humiliate yourself, say dumb shit, insult, try to do things to get blown out.

[Do this without drinking] (This is just a theory so take it with a grain of salt) If you do try to go for broke, write up an FR about it.

knk9 · 2011-12-17T02:39:44+00:00

You have two options:

1, You see a girl you find attractive; go say hi

2, Dig a hole and die in it

drumdance · 2011-12-17T01:34:53+00:00

Hi OP, similar problems here, let me begin with a rather long introduction. I grew up being the only child, and became quite self-centered and narcisstic, expecting attention from everyone, but lacked a strong fatherly figure (I don't talk to my dad), and somewhere down the line became very beta and AFC. I would rate myself above average in looks thought I'm short. The lack of confidence I have is killing me as well - before learning about Seddit and Game, I would just blame everything on "lacking balls" or "lacking confidence", but now I know its a combination of a lot of things.

On the exterior, it might be poor body language and vocal tonality. But on the interior, things are even worse, which is why I try to resort to liquid courage. I've read everything on the sidebar and some other books as well, and I know exactly what I need to be thinking of to activate strong inner game. In fact, I even have clutch phrases on my phone to look at all times. But I realize that shit doesn't work. It gets me stuck in my head even more, and my mind sooner or later likes to bring myself down in situations where I don't feel comfortable and I start letting fear and limiting beliefs take over me. On a bad day, I'm afraid of even talking to guys I'm not close with, much less a girl I'm interested in.

So instead, my current resolve is to stop reading and attempting to "game" for a while and trying to change my self-image (I'm reading a book called Psycho Cybernetics and no I'm not advertising) and getting to know myself better. This means doing the things alone that I like more instead of going out blindly and end up overanalyzing and being stuck in my own head. I am a natural introvert (don't know if you are) so I need a lot of recovery time and preparation if I want to do well in a social situation, such as group conversations.

I feel that when my self-image becomes more intact and I generally feel more content on a daily basis, then I might actually feel comfortable talking to others.

SemiautoPenguin · 2011-12-17T01:59:45+00:00

Man, If I had to sum up my problems in a post, this is it. I feel the exact same way: I'm always in my head, and it always screws me over, whether it's being unable to open a set, or self-sabotaging while I'm opening.

I guess the only times I've been able to dodge it are when I just flat out don't care what others think of me, but those nights are few and far between. The comments so far are great, keep em' coming, you're helping a bunch of us sedditors who deal with the exact same problems!

Shuttlecock · 2011-12-17T02:14:26+00:00

get a shitty part time retail job where you work once a week. after 6 or 7 months of being forced to interact with hundreds of people every day that you've never met it'll get about 50% better.

other things. go to the same club over and over again till you're familiar with the places.

you may not have a script but have an opener and a few canned lines ready.

sillymallard · 2011-12-17T04:48:11+00:00

Come from the standpoint of self-amusement and don't worry about girls and closes yet. Come from this frame:

You are in the bar, being amused by everything, and the people in the bar are for your entertainment. Don't try to get anything from people, just go up to them and share your fun, funny self-amusement with them. If they don't want to have a part in it, be amused by their rejection.

Basshead13 · 2011-12-17T14:51:35+00:00

You play up girls in your own mind to be way more intimidating than they actually are. At the end of the day they are still human beings. A large majority of strangers will be nice back to you if you cross paths with them. This is the same for women. They will be nice to inherently unless 1.) you do something that offends them, or 2.) they are just a complete bitch (very very small percentage). I have found in the past getting as drunk as possible most likely will cause you to turn into an asshole and most likely cause you to say/do something that offends them causing them to not like you.

SortaBeta · 2011-12-17T17:37:06+00:00

Just be comfortable wherever you go or whatever you do. Nothing fazes you.

Epoh · 2011-12-17T21:08:53+00:00

I feel bad for you man i really do, but at least you have glimpses of success where you take what you want when you want it and get laid. Youve got past success to fall back on, and you shiuld remind yourself of that more often than you probably do. Id take the success youve had in one of your spurts over what ive done up until is point so dont feel to worthless.

Title	Guys, I need your help working on confidence.
Author	helpmeimnotconfident
Upvotes	37
Comments	46
Date	December 16, 2011 8:46 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/seduction
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/nfkib/guys_i_need_your_help_working_on_confidence/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/seduction/guys-i-need-your-help-working-on-confidence.1325873 https://theredarchive.com/post/1325873

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