Primer on Confidence

Over and over, when women are asked what they most want to see in a man, they say confidence.

WTF is confidence? Why do they want that? How do you get it?

What is Confidence?

The best definition I have seen of confidence is the following: Confidence is knowing that you are going to be fine whether or not you get the girl.

Read that again. Some people think confidence is being confident that you will get the girl. It’s not. Because you don’t know that. No one knows that. If you know PUA, you know that there are multiple factors beyond your control that may get in the way of that. Knowing you're going to get the girl is called arrogance, not confidence.

Confidence is outcome independence. It’s about not being all hung up on that one particular girl. It’s about not being needy. It’s about not getting your ego caught up in whether the girl likes you or not. It’s knowing that your self-worth is not going to be affected one way or the other by the outcome of that interaction because your self-worth is determined by what you think of yourself, not what other people think about you.

In PUA, confidence is sometimes called Inner Game. Inner game is the process of getting to that mental state where you’re going to have fun whether the girl likes you or not. Once you’re there, you lose much of approach anxiety (though it never goes away). It takes away the sting of rejection. You will find it hilarious if a girl shuts you down hard. You ego won’t be affected if she tell you to get lost.

What does confidence look like in person? How does one act when confident? How do girls decide you’re confident?

To see what confidence look like, look at the guys who do the best with girls without being able to offer anything else other than confidence. Short guys with no money or status who land the top quality girls. Guys like Rick Solomon (before he made all that money) who had sex with Paris Hilton, Pam Anderson, Drew Barrymore, and a lot more girls. Emily Ratajkowski's husband Sebastian Bear-McClard (granted, he is tall, but otherwise he looks like Shrek). If you look how they carry themselves, they all carry themselves exactly the same: posed, relaxed, moving slowly, acting nonchalantly about their smokeshow GF/wife. Just pick a guy who’s a nothing who’s dating a hot celebrity and you will see him acting exactly the same.

Howard Stern’s interview of Rick is the best example of confidence but it has been scrubbed off the internet. Another great example, though fictional, is Marlon Brando in Godfather. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i96VS_z8y7g

Another guy who’s super confident, although in this case it’s a bit confabulated by the fact that he’s tall and attractive, is this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj9tvIFcUeU . I would rate him a 9 on the confidence scale but not a 10. He moves too quickly, his posture is not great, and he kind of leans forward. He’s going to be able to get these hot college girls but he’s not going to be able to land Madison Beer.

In that video, there is an important lesson. His direct opener with the first girl establishes some confidence, but at that point the girl is not sure if he’s confident, arrogant, or crazy. Even though he’s physically attractive, she’s more nervous than attracted at the beginning. The true display of confidence comes at 0:36 when he tells her not to rush him. It’s when he shows he’s relaxed enough to crack a joke that he displays true confidence and she develops attraction to him.

In another video, https://youtu.be/87OCk3E_3IY?t=59 ,he stops a girl who’s on the phone and tells her to hang up. That’s another display of confidence and some of you might think this is staged, but this is not that uncommon. Believe it or not, girls will do this. It’s not easy to pull off, but I’ve done the same thing more than once.

In this video https://youtu.be/vzjDyg1NVGI?t=163 , he gets a phone number from a girl after she tells him she’s got a BF. If you know PUA, you know that half the girls who say they have a BF actually don’t, and it’s often a shit test (another common shit test is for a girl to tell you she’s lesbian). If you pass it by saying what this guy said, or “now you have a new one” or something along those lines, you’ll almost always get the number. At least that’s been my personal experience. (Of the ones who have a real BF, quite a few will still give out their number. I’ve had a lot of girls tell me, “btw, I have a BF, just so you know” as they’re giving me their number.)

There are a lot of ways that a guy displays confidence. For example, through his posture, the pace at which he speaks, the way he doesn’t always glance at the girl to see if she approves of what he’s saying, passing shit tests, etc. There is an entire library of things which PUA literature covers in painful detail.

But of all of these, two things are absolutely sine qua non of confidence to girls. If you have these two things, you are confident. If you’re not confident, you can’t do these two things. Therefore if you can do these two things, the girls know with certainty that you’re confident. The first is passing shit tests, which I will cover below.

The second is the willingness to take risks, to polarize. You’re not worried about making a bad impression on the girl so you do things even if they’re risky.

What are risky tings? Telling jokes. Pulling her leg. Saying no. Negging. Being directive and making decisions. These are all things we do when we’re with guys, to each other. But these are things guys without confidence don’t do, can’t do, when they’re with girls.

When you have confidence, you’re not afraid to disagree. If she says, “I think Trump is an ass” you are comfortable saying, “that’s not right” instead of just nodding. When she says, “EDM is crap” you are comfortable saying “I think EDM is great” or “I see I have a lot to teach you” instead of agreeing with her.

This shows 1) you respect yourself 2) you are honest

When you have confidence, you’re not afraid to take charge. Instead of “do you want to get dome dessert?” You say, “let’s go to this place I know.”

When you have confidence, you’re not afraid to tell her “that joke was not funny at all, I’ll give you another chance” instead of laughing weakly.

When you have confidence, you’re not afraid to call her out when she gets out of line. “Look, it’s not OK to be this late on a first date”

Girls are dying for a guy who’s not afraid to call her out, to stand their ground, to lead, to direct her, and most of all, not be afraid to lose her.

Which brings us to: Why do girls like confidence?

We assume women want in men what we want in women. So we assume they look for good-looking guys first and foremost.

No.

Women don’t look for the same thing in men that men look for in women. They look for the same thing in men that men look for in men.

No, I don’t mean what gay guys look for. I mean the characteristics that men look for in other men when they’re looking for leadership in a crisis. When you’re about to go into a battle. When you’re in an emergency and you need to get out of the burning building. Someone confident, strong, and dependable.

(I found that as I developed confidence, I often find that not only do girls tell me I'm confident, guys look to me for leadership more and more often. I never used to be a natural leader among men. But now, if I’m with a bunch of guys they seem to just assume I’m going to be the leader and they defer to me. That’s how you know you’ve developed true confidence, when guys look to you for leadership.)

Women look for men who other men will follow. Men who can protect them or carry themselves like they can. This is simple biology. Guys wants girls who will be good mothers. Girls look for guys who can protect them in a crisis.

Now, because truly confident men are so rare, women will sometimes go after a close substitute. For example, arrogant guys. Guys with swagger and bluster. High status guys with money or fame. Sometimes, unfortunately, guys who treat them like shit. But none of these are real confidence.

Interestingly, the guys I’ve seen with true confidence are short guys who have the ability to command the room. I think some of them develop the skills to project confidence because they have to, in order to make their way in the world.

How does a girl tell if a guy has confidence? Partly by observing him of course. But if she’s actually starting to get interested, she will fire off shit tests. Shit tests are not something they do on purpose. They’re naturally programmed to do that if they’re actively considering a potential mate. I won’t go into shit tests in detail because once again, there is an entire library about that written already, but if. Girl shit tests you, it’s a good sign.

Now, you might ask, why don’t girls just ask a guy about him. Why don’t they ask, “Are you confident? Are you strong? Do you have self-respect? Are you quick-witted? Can you stand up to pressure?” Because guys can lie. Shit tests don’t lie. A guy who’s nervous can’t pass shit tests.

Girls don’t want a guy where she’s the best he could ever do. They want a high quality guy who could easily get a girl who’s better than her. How can they tell? Well, if the guy is nervous about losing her, that’s a pretty good signal that at least in his mind she’s out of his league. If he’s confident, if his self-worth is not going to be affected by whether he gets her, then she assumes that he can easily do better.

So, how do you become confident?

Notice I said how do you become confident, not how do you act confident. It’s very hard to fake confidence. When you say something funny, a tiny glance to see if she finds it funny vs. not caring if she finds it funny can be a dead give-away. When she talks too softly, leaning in to hear what she is saying vs. saying “can you speak up a bit, it’s loud in here” without skipping a beat is also a give-away. You can’t confident, you have to feel confident. It’s inner game, not outer game.

True PUA is about becoming confident, not acting confident. As I said in my last post, PUA is not about acting attractive, it’s about becoming attractive. If you want to learn about inner game, I highly recommend Models. 75% of PUA is about becoming confident.

You need two things to develop confidence. The first is putting yourself in the right mental state, and I’ve listed some things below that help me get into that mental state. The second are some exercise that has worked well for many people. The third, and the most important, is practice and success. You’ve just got to approach as many girls as you can. You’ll need to approach several hundred at least. As you become better, your success rate will improve and that will increase your confidence, which will result in a virtuous cycle.

There are some exercises that work well, but the best I’ve seen is to go up to girls with a terrible pickup line and try to get rejected. This was developed by Kezia. You go up to girl who you think are way out of your league and give them a terrible corny pickup line. You’ll find that even the bad reactions are nowhere near what you imagine. And that rejections are OK.

A variant, which I call the Freedom Exercise (from Joplin line "freedom is another word for nothing left to lose") , is to go up to girls assuming that you have 0 chance with the girl and you want to just talk to her and joke around.

The third variant is to pretend you're not actually trying to get the girl but rather that you're making a funny youtube video like AlmostEpic guy above.

Just framing it as an exercise, a learning experience, alone can help you improve your inner game.

Here are some things that put mental state into the right frame.

1a) Remember that if a girl rejects you, it’s often because of something that has nothing to do with you. She might be tired, or have a BF, or be worried about something at work, be looking for her friend, be hungry or have.a cramp, or a bunch of other things. These things have nothing to do with you.

1b) The corollary to the above is that you might approach the exact same girl the next day or even later the same night and she might have a very different reaction. It happens all the time. I’ve re-approached girls the same night and very often, she is much more receptive the second or third time around as long you’re not being a dick.

1c) The corollary to the above is that a girl who’s receptive to you right now may not be tomorrow. So don’t miss your chance. Act now.

2) Girls have different tastes in guys, even more so than guys do. Just because a 7 rejected you, it doesn’t mean another 7 would reject you. Another girl who looks exactly like the one who rejected you might be all over you. You don’t have to be appealing to every 7 before you’re appealing to an 8. You don’t have to be appealing to every 8 before you’re appealing to a 9.

3) Every rejection is a learning experience. Each time you get rejected you get better if you are willing to learn.

4) Most girls are insecure. They’re a lot more insecure than guys are. Many of them are a mess of insecurities. This is why they despise men who are afraid of them. They know how insecure they are, and if a guy is more insecure than them, well, that’s pretty pathetic. They perseverate over every little detail of how some other girl is taller, or has better hair, or has bigger boobs than the do. Most girls you approach will be more scared of you than you are of them.

5) You are enough. Because you’re a guy, and she’s a girl. Fundamentally, that’s all that is required. That is the only thing that is absolutely necessary. So long as this is true, you have a shot.

6) Even picky girls get horny. She may not want you to be her BF, but if the timing is right, and she’s ovulating, and her friends won’t find out, and there is no other good option at 3 am, there is only upside for her. She gets sex, which is better than no sex. You don’t have to be Mr. Right, just Mr. Right Now. Really.

All this boils down to: you never know how an interaction will turn out.

So take your shot. You will be surprised.