A lot of men have great difficulty understanding how to improve their confidence when speaking to women as it’s quite intangible. So in this post, I’m going to break down what actually makes you confident and give you a simple mindset shift that’ll change everything.

First of all, instead of asking the classical question - what is confidence and how can I improve it, let’s flip it around. What is the opposite of confidence?

The opposite of confidence is hesitation. And hesitation happens when you’re unsure - when you don’t know exactly what to do or how things will play out.

For example, let’s say you see a girl in real life and you want to talk to her but you start asking yourself:

Does she look friendly? Will other people see me? What are the chances she has a boyfriend?

Most guys start looking for the “perfect” moment - waiting for the girl to be alone, making sure she’s not in a rush, checking if she looks friendly enough. They try to gather as much information as possible before making a move essentially to maximize the probability that their approach will lead to success. That’s clear hesitation and it will be impossible to be confident in this case.

There’s never going to be a moment where you have all the information. You’ll never reach a point where you feel 100% ready. And the more you analyse, the more hesitant you become. So by gathering more information you will actually be less confident in the end.

The goal is not to collect as much information as possible to ensure success. Rather the goal is to act as fast as possible while embracing any sort of outcome.

Think about it - if you see a girl and decide to approach her within two seconds, you’re going to feel way more confident than if you stand there analysing for three minutes. When you go immediately, you will have way more intent and certainty than going after 3 minutes of waiting and analysing.

So the trick is to shorten the time between seeing an opportunity and acting on it. The longer you wait, the more you psych yourself out. But if you move fast, your brain doesn’t have time to create hesitation.

Most guys think confidence comes from knowing things will go well hence they try to analyse their way into confidence. But real confidence comes from knowing you’ll be fine no matter what happens and then minimizing the level of hesitation.

So if you are trying to maximize your confidence and it's not working so far - try to switch it around and minimize the level of hesitation.

If you can do that, you will have much more confidence as a by-product.