We hear the word “confidence” being used all the time. To be a strong productive man, you need a healthy dose of it. Even though confidence is one of the key foundations for success, what is confidence, how do we get it, and how do we maintain it?
There are many definitions of “confidence”, but we will work with a simple meaning that will help us move into it. Confidence: The belief in yourself to do a particular thing. There are 3 main areas of confidence, but first, how do you even know that you are lacking confidence in the first place?
I think that it is most effective to know where something comes from, then identify it, then you will be in a better position to improve it.
Where does lack of confidence come from?
The lack of confidence can come from…
- .
- Childhood. Verbal/psychological/physical abuse.
- Teen years. Lack of acceptance by other boys/the cool dudes/homeboys, Continuous strike outs with romantic interests, or Bullying.
- Job loss. Unable to find work, slow moving career.
- Body image. Feeling Too big/too slim, too tall/too short, ETC.
- Performance issues in the bedroom. Lack of drive, erection problems, penis size, ETC.
I have had a taste of each of these myself, and it sucks!
Signs that you lack self-confidence
If you have low self-confidence or low self-esteem, you may…
- Get Depressed easily
- Self Deprecating
- Cannot accept compliments/second guesses them.
- Blaming others/running from responsibility
- Self Sabotage
I have resembled some of these things on my road to understanding confidence.
The 3 kinds of confidence
Now that we talked about at lease some of the causes and warning signs, lets break down confidence, and lets do it confidently!
There are 3 kinds of confidence.
1. Situational Confidence
This is the form that seems most common, and it is the basic meaning we started out with at the beginning of this article. The belief in yourself to do a particular thing. . You may be confident in your ability to play sports, understand math, attract women, stir frying frogs, or coloring your hair orange. You can be confident in these things without feeling confident in yourself as a whole. In other words, you could shine on the basketball court, then go home and cry cause you feel like an old banana peal, even though you just won the game for your team, taking the championship.
This is the kind of confidence I had. I was good at speaking, acting, teaching and more, but still felt like a loser with nothing to offer, while others cheered my latest acting skit, or song parity. What the hell is going on!
2. Self-Esteem
This form of confidence is based in how much you like yourself, and is referred by some as the cousin of confidence. Do you hold yourself in high esteem? Do you have self-love? Do you feel you are worthy of good things, good people and a good life? Yes, it is possible to have situational confidence, but not actually like yourself. Its possible to be popular with others, get laid every night, have basketball teams beg you to sign with them, and still not like yourself.
I know this one as well. I did have a level of popularity, I was attractive, I had talents, but none of that really sank in. I still focused on my shortcomings, and was not really even sure if I liked myself. I thought I did, but I had doubts. What a ride!
3. Core Confidence
This is the type of confidence that we think of when we think about being confident. Core confidence is deeper than situational confidence, and if you have core confidence, you also have a healthy portion of self-esteem.
This website is dedicated to helping you develop that core confidence. Core confidence is an intrinsic belief in yourself as a person. You have strong levels of self-love, personal awareness, a healthy self-image, and all the perks of strong, confident, head to toe manhood.
Now…here is something for you to be aware of. You can have core confidence without having situational confidence. When you have that deep solid belief in yourself, you understand your talents and deficits, and you believe in your capacity to learn new things. If you are not confident on stage, you know that you are able to learn, you push past self-doubts, anxieties and fears, and you learn what you need to in order to be where you want to be.
Notice how being core confident does not mean you do not have self-doubts every now and then. It just means that you know yourself well enough to move past it. You know yourself well enough to identify, then effectively deal with those inner blocks and doubts so they do not stop you in achieving your goals.
You might be nervous to talk to that pretty woman, but with core confidence, you either don’t feel nervous, or you know how to move past it and start chatting her up. You may be like the 75% of folks who have a fear of public speaking, but with core confidence, you get on stage anyway because you know that action is how you get past fear, and the benefit of achievement is stronger than the downward pull of anxiety.
When you have core confidence, it will help your sex life, relationships, work and other areas.
This is the type of confidence that I set out to achieve. To achieve this core confidence it can take time. It can take time to reprogram old messages, habits and energies. Don’t let that stop you! Lets look at the 2 step approach to build manly core confidence.
How to build strong manly core self-confidence
Part 1. Master your inner game
The way we see the world is the way the world will appear. Everything starts in your mind. Share on X- 1. Challenge your negative thoughts.
We have a Quintilian thoughts per day, and many of those thoughts can be self deprecating. You may have negative thoughts that tell you you are not good enough, that you will never get this job, no woman would ever want to be with you and so on.
Take each negative thought about yourself and ask, is that thought really true? When I was younger, I use to think that no chick would want to be with a skinny dude like me. Was that true? No it wasn’t. I saw other skinny dudes with women, and I was no virgin either, but due to my own insecurities about my body size, that became the negative assumption that my mind created, but it had no real truth to it.
First, I challenged the thoughts with real life events, then I got down to the real issue, a body insecurity. With this info I could do 1 of 2 things. I could see how incorrect my negative assumption was and get over it and get back to the dating hunt, or I could decide to hit the gym, and reach a size I personally like.
What is a false belief you have or had about yourself?
- 2. List all the good qualities about yourself.
This is the time for you to stroke your own ego a little. Look at your life and identify all the good things about you. Personality traits, values, physical appearance, ETC.
If you can’t come up with anything, ask close friends and family what they like about you. They will be happy to tell you, just make sure you believe them. Do not dismiss any compliment, take it in, and be happy that you are able to make others happy with your presents.
I won’t take up the next 17 pages with my list of personal good qualities, but there was a time that I truly could not make a list. With good friends around me, and becoming more self-aware, I was able to move into a more confident place when it came to understanding what I have to offer.
What are the first 5 good qualities about yourself that you can think of right now.
- 3. Stop comparing yourself to other men.
Many of us have heard this one, and we hear it a lot because its true. Do not waste any time comparing yourself to the dude next door, or to the athletes on TV, or the stream of headlines on social media, or your best friend.
Comparing yourself to somebody else is inherently unbalanced and unfair to yourself. You are with you all the time, but the information you have about others is told to you or assumed by you, but does not give you a full picture of somebody else’s life experiences.
Any time we hear that some big celebrity commits suicide, many people get surprised. They had all this money, fame, status, power, chicks, a huge dick, cars, number one songs, but they just pitched themselves in the east river. That’s because we were only seeing one tiny part of their whole lives. We have no idea what it took to get there, what qualities they are lacking that you already have, and what troubles confront them in their personal life or their own head.
I must admit, I had this problem big time. I did not compare myself to celebrities, but to certain men around me. I was ignoring my own qualities and talents and wishing I had some trait they had. It was usually looks or popularity. This is where the good personal quality list would come in handy. If you want to compare you could compare yourself to your past self, and then try and beat that, or let the energy of others success spur you on to reach your own goals.
What’s one thing that you have improved in over the past year?
- 4. Develop your own vision.
This spins off of being better than your past self. Every strong confident man has a strong set of values, and a vision for himself.
Where do you want to go in life? What affect do you want to have in the world? When you know what you believe and where you want to go, your manly confidence will kick into high gear. You are at your best as a man when you have a purpose.
For some men it could take a while to clearly figure that out. You may even need some help in breaking things down. There is no shame in that.
As a young man, I felt my purpose, but it was not clear. It revolved around expression, helping others, and entertainment, I just needed some time to figure out how that would look. As you can see, I think I got it now!
What parts of your manly vision do you have worked out?
Part 2. The outer game, taking the field.
The only true way to build manly core self-confidence is to take action. Take action, and take action again, then after that, take action again. Share on XNow that you have gotten to know yourself and question your negative doubts, now you’ve got to go out and test it in the real rough and tumble of life.
- 1. Take up a new skill or hobby.
Even though us as men like to think we know it all, we don’t, and nobody does. If you know you need a skill that you lack, sign up for that class. Improve your public speaking, take a business course, start a morning running routine, learn how to rap, what ever gets you up, out, doing, learning, and testing/stretching yourself.
In the next week, what routine or skill do you want to take up?
- 2. Set small, bite size goals.
Yes, as men, we prosper most when we have a big goal or purpose to work towards. As humans, we often like instent gratification. It is possible to have both. Take your long term goal and break it down to smaller sub goals. This helps improve your momentum to get to the larger goal, and it gives you great quick small wins.
After working with many different kinds of men, I found that many resist giving themselves credit for small or short term achievements. Don’t skip this! We are often looking for some big bang, and while that is great, setting, achieving, and giving yourself credit for all the small goals along the way will be fuel for your manly core self-confidence.
What do you want to accomplish this week?
- 3. Embrace rejection.
Yes, get up, go out and get rejected. To be a core confident man, its best not to allow yourself to get sidetracked by rejection. Do not let your fear of rejection stop you from moving forward.
Talk to the person you are scared to, if they say no, move on and talk to another one you are interested in. Apply for jobs, try out for teams, do what ever you truly want to do, and if you get rejected, turned down, or get told to go play in traffic, try something else you want.
Over time, you will get use to rejection. Its part of life, and as a core confident man, you believe in your own value and understand that you are not right for everybody, or every situation. You will also do your fair share of rejecting as well.
Also, its good to remember that every rejection is not personal. The chick you want may say no because she has a boyfriend, but didn’t tell you for what ever reason, or she could be just getting over a break up and do not want a rebound relationship or sex session. Its not you, its her.
In the book, Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection, the author goes on an adventure. He tries to get rejected as much as possible, just to become unmoved by it, and he came away with some great interesting data. Reading this book brought me a long way to understanding rejection.
What action can you take this week that you were afraid to do because of rejection?
- 4. Stop people pleasing.
This is an action that you should not take. Don’t do it. Don’t be a people-pleaser. A strong self-confident man does not spend his time trying to please everybody or meet others approval. This goes back to the inner game. a core confident man has his own mind. You need to have your own principles, values, thoughts and actions. Those actions should depend on what you determent is right for you.
Its perfectly fine to make others happy, to please your partner, to honor commitments and so on, but make sure you are taking those actions because you want to, and not simply because others want you to. You give up control as a man when you push your principles aside, disregard your own needs, and turn control over to others.
When you take care of yourself, when you are true to your own values and vision, you are in the best position to take care of others.
What are you doing now to hand control to somebody else, and how can you reclaim your power?
- 5. Have friendly competition.
As men, many of us have a competitive streak. This is fine, as long as you are in control of it. Engage your friends in good natured competition. Play sports, test each others knowledge, or anything else that challenges you to step up and get confronted. You can even have conversations with people who have opposite opinions than you. Get your values and principles tested, and see how strong they are.
Having your deeply held beliefs challenged can be tough, but it can also make you stronger. You will also get to find out if you think what you do because you think it, or because you were taught it.
Stand like a man!
In order to be a core confident man, you need to challenge yourself. Challenge yourself both mentally and physically. Challenge your thoughts, insecurities, values, world view, knowledge, ETC.
If you are a man who wants to build solid, manly core self-confidence, you can do it. Just make the choice to do it. Decide you are going to step into your own power. Decide that you are going to be the man you know you want to be. If you leave your self-confidence up to others, you will be right where you are. You will get a quick jolt of pleasure when somebody likes you, agrees with you, sleeps with you or goes along with you, but it will not last unless you take control of it for yourself. Nobody will ever take care of you better than yourself once you decide to do so.
Stand up, look in, go out, and stay firm, you man you!.
Unshame Your Masculinity!
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