When the topic of how to become more confident comes up the answers are often put in ways which just scare people off. People wanting to be more confident are often advised to gain it by doing a variety of things such as walking right up to people in Shopping Malls and starting a conversation with them, practice saying ‘hello’ to strangers and all that kind of thing.

To my mind, this kind of ‘help’ shows a real lack of understanding of human nature. It works for some people; but for many people the tackle-it-head-on approach misses the point and causes a lot of completely unnecessary fear and trauma.

In fact, for many people the kind of ‘helpful advice’ they are offered to become more confident actually damages what little confidence they already have. They know that they just cannot do. They cannot take the actions they are told the ’should’ take and so they end up feeling even worse about themselves as they feel a failure before they even start.

I suggest that there is a way to develop confidence, which is not scary for even a very shy person.

It is a two-step process:

Step 1: Encouragement – learn how to encourage yourself and reward yourself.
Step 2: Stretch not strain – stretch your current limits, don’t strain them.

Lets look at what these steps means:

1) Encouragement – Learn how to encourage yourself and reward yourself.

There is ‘nothing succeeds like success’ as the old saying goes. In order to develop greater confidence we must be wiling to acknowledge any success we have no matter how small.

Most people do the opposite of that. They keep comparing themselves to some absolute ideal and putting themselves down when they don’t match up to it. Self-blame erodes and destroys confidence it does not help to build it. To develop confidence, stop self-blame. That will in itself make a huge difference.

Look at the meaning of the word ‘encourage’. When we encourage ourselves we say ‘Well done’. We tell ourselves that we did good. The dictionary defines ‘encourage’ like this: ‘To inspire with hope, courage, or confidence;’

Did you get that? Do you see what that definition is telling us? It tells us that to ‘en-courage’ is to actually ‘make courage’ and to ‘make confidence’. In other words when we encourage ourselves we make ourselves more courageous and more confident.

Self Encouragement is the secret key to self confidence. (Hey – you didn’t even have to buy a book to find out!)

Say you managed to say ‘hello’ to someone we would have been too shy to say hello to before. It is important to seize on that and tell yourself ‘Well done’. This helps inspire you to greater confidence. What you must not do is give yourself a hard time for not living up to extreme expectations; such as being down on yourself for not being able to sweep the person of their feet with a few words – like what happens in movies. Your life is not a movie – not yet anyway.

You can even reward yourself with a small treat of something you like such as an ice-cream or something (but don’t pig out though) when you have a breakthrough.

Step 2: Stretch not strain – stretch your current limits, don’t strain them.

This means working with the life you already have and taking small steps forward. Think about any particular social skill you would like to develop and practice on easy targets.

For example: Say you want to be better at giving compliments. Practice on people you already know (but no more than one compliment each time you meet someone). Don’t save it all up till you meet some babe or hunk that you are really into. Develop your skills (i.e. your compliment muscles) well before then you will be able to handle the babe/hunk with natural ease.

Give compliments to your mum, sister or brother, friends or colleagues. Notice the friendly old lady at the grocery store queue with the nice jacket and tell her how good it looks. Notice things you admire about people you like and gradually start to tell them.

To begin with only do this with people that you have little or no investment in how they respond. If this feels to scary to do one particular person then pick a less scary target and try it out on them. Once you get used to the idea you will do it with more and more ease till you can do it with just about anyone.

Whatever level you are at in being confident Self Encouragement will help. If you confidence is normally pretty good, but you have hit a low patch then encouraging yourself will turn it around.

Simple arithmetic shows that you can’t make something positive by adding something negative to it. Likewise you can’t become a better person by being negative about yourself. Give up any form of self-blame and start encouraging yourself and see all sorts of ‘problems’ and ‘issues’ you had just melt away. Don’t worry your therapist will find another client!

You can use Self Encouragement to boost your ability to develop any social skill be it; making eye contact, telling jokes or finding the love of your life.

Have you spotted the key yet? The secret key to self-confidence is Self Encouragement. Practice Self Encouragement and watch your self-confidence – and your life – blossom.

Most people believe that they are their thoughts but this is far from the truth. Spend an hour, day, even a week just observing your thoughts. After a week you will notice two things:

1. The mind is mostly fear based and thus not very useful 2. The voice continues without your conscious effort-it runs on it’s own.

When you actually listen to your thoughts and identify with them many neurotic and unhealthy beliefs will start to form. Your mind tells you that you have been wronged by someone and anger ensues. Your thoughts wish harm upon that person and now you feel guilty for thinking that.

Guilt, anger, shame, doubt and INSECURITY are all products of the mind and prevent you from being more confident. How many times have you been around women only to have your mind blow it for you? I’m guessing plenty because it has happened to me more times than I care to remember.

If your interaction is going well with women then your mind will get overly paranoid about screwing it up. “You’re doing good, now don’t mess this up. Oh God, she didn’t laugh at my joke now she’s no longer attracted to me, Damn it.” Or if the interaction isn’t going well you will have the same type of thoughts. No matter what you do you just can’t win when you listen to your mind.

For the most part emotions stem from your mind, how it reacts and it’s beliefs. How calm or how nervous you are at any given time depends on how much you listen to the thoughts your mind produces. The more you listen to your mind the more nervous you will become because your mind is extremely negative and overly paranoid. If you learn to get out of your mind your emotions will become a gentle pool instead of a typhoon crashing down on a small village.

People love to drink because it allows them to escape and enter a state of non thinking. In this state their minds are no longer producing fears that cause them to ruin most of their interactions with women. With their mind on the sidelines people are no longer inhibited and can do what they truly want to do.

Learning to enter a state of non thinking while being sober is the best gift that you can give to yourself. More on how to escape your insecure thoughts and develop more confidence will e explained in part three of this series on How to Be More Confident.

In addition that article I recommend picking up Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of Now.’ This book has been a great help to my success with women. It has been at the core of my own personal self development.

Echkart Tolle: The Power of Now

The biggest obstacle to confidence that the mind creates is self loathing. While it’s important to ignore that little voice that causes so much damage you need to also be consciously creating good beliefs about yourself.

I don’t suggest creating outrageous beliefs that are not even close to being based on reality. An example of this is the affirmation “All women want me and are attracted to me”-that will never be true no matter how hard you try.

Good Beliefs to Instill

The problem with affirmations is that the mind will constantly try and convince you of the opposite. You will say something positive and the mind will argue the negative. Try your hardest but the mind will not relent on it’s position:

Me: “I’m awesome” Mind: “No you’re not” Me: “Women love me” Mind: “Really? You’re wrong about that buddy, women hate you. What about that girl last week who looked at you in disgust when you asked her how she was doing? Forgot about that didn’t you, loser”

Trying to convince yourself of affirmations that aren’t based on reality can be very time consuming and ultimately futile. A better approach to gaining confidence through developing beliefs is to go with affirmations that are based in truth. Here are two affirmations that are based in truth and will get you very far:

“I am enough”

“I love and accept myself the way I am”

I am enough means that you are complete just the way you are. Women, money, fame won’t make you feel more complete and content because you possess those things already inside of yourself. You can lose everything, family, friends, jobs and you will still survive because you are enough already.

“I am enough” is the opposite of neediness. You won’t need anything else because you are enough and complete already-everything else is just an added bonus. Whenever you are needy you are losing sight of the fact that you are enough.

You were born feeling like you were enough but have learned how to be insecure, self conscious and feeling like you aren’t enough over time. Take any baby or toddler and you will see how well they hold the affirmation “I am enough.” They don’t try and get people to like them. They don’t try to be accepted by others because they accept themselves the way they are. They are only concerned with getting their diapers changed and finding a breast to suck on.

Start to pay attention to the times that you are insecure, needy and self conscious. Whenever those moments occur take a deep breath and repeat the affirmation “I am enough” over and over. Notice how those feelings subside if not disappear altogether.

“I love and accept myself the way I am” means to accept yourself, warts and all. In order to accept yourself the way you are you must first be honest. If you refuse to acknowledge the darker and not so nice parts of yourself then you will never learn to love yourself unconditionally.

In order to learn how to love yourself check out my post on the subject here: How to Love Yourself

Developing superior confidence with women is not as hard as it seems. Confidence is a learned skill, not an automatic attribute. It has to be grown like anything that is of any value. Let’s to some of the more obvious areas of confidence.

This first thing is a lot easier than expected. For almost everyone, the first part of gaining confidence is to develop a positive mindset. When you learn to like yourself and think that what you say has merit, then you are well on your way. The positive mindset looks at all sides of an issue, then thinks on the most positive solution or attribute of that issue.

Confidence has to be practiced. No one plays the piano well without practicing. It’s the same with confidence. Look in the mirror every day and say ‘Good morning!! It’s going to be a great day today.” Then keep saying this to yourself through out the day. Even if you have a crummy day, just remind yourself that it’s a great day. I know that this may be difficult at first, but it get easier and easier as time goes

Next, start talking. Don’t talk with just women, but talk with everyone. Talk about the weather, the football season, work. As soon as the snow clears, talk about going out for a walk with a friend, male or female. No radio or television. Just the sweet sounds of conversation. Find out what people like and dislike, what make’s them happy. Pay attention to what they say about themselves, then remember it for another conversation at another time.

Lastly, be charming. Women like to be treated with gentleness, kindness, and deference. That’s what being charming is all about. Manners do count. So does being fun. Together they are dynamite with the ladies.

Put all these elements together and you will be a magnetic, fun person to be around.

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Not that long ago I went to a conference to learn about communication. I thought it was great, for a writer, to have better communication skills. During one exercise a man of about 6 feet 2 inches in height stood up to confess his “communication blocker” and with a perfectly straight face he stood in front of about 40 men and women and announced that he had a small penis, but that his wife really loves it and that it’s okay because he has learned to use it well. He stated that before he accepted his small penis, he wasn’t able to communicate effectively. Through the applause, all I could think was, “Now that is one confident guy.” Yes, being able to admit out shortcomings can seem very confident. Confidence comes in accepting parts of ourselves that simply can’t be perfect and can’t be changed, like a small penis.

Confidence by definition means assurance and a belief in one’s own abilities. That means that you can develop confidence by practicing, by accepting, and by finding assurance and evidence of assurance. How do we do that? Simple. Look around you. Surely there are plenty of signs that really, you are a—okay. Maybe your evidence hides in your job, your family, or your friends, but whatever you have managed to accomplish in this life thus far is most definitely evidence of assurance. Does that mean that things you have lost mean that you’re not okay? No. It just means you missed the mark on that one and that it wasn’t the right time.

Confidence can allow you the freedom to approach the woman that caught your eye as well as be more effective in your own relationship. Confidence doesn’t have to become cockiness or even demeaning, just a faith that you will be able to perform well and that you are smart enough and capable enough to deal with life and what it has to offer. It really is that simple. Of course that doesn’t mean that it is easy. Not by a long shot for those without confidence.

Often defining what it is about you that makes you feel rather unlikely to be able to land the date or makes you feel as though you aren’t quite “man” enough to tackle the issues can bring about the cause of your lack of confidence. Whoever told you that you were out of her league doesn’t know what they are talking about. All of the stereotypical definitions that women dig certain types of men based on the way that they themselves look is really just gibberish made up ages ago by a guy who wanted to eliminate his competition and win the girl. Obviously it worked. It worked so well that many of us are fighting the same notion that he threw out there over a century ago.

Societal definitions have given men a lot of crossed wires when it comes to what confidence means and how it is perceived by women. Women themselves have had to strive so hard to find their confident voice that many women aren’t really sure themselves how they feel about confident guys. However, it a biological and societal fact that women are more drawn to guys who walk tall and know how to call their own shots. Women are nurturers, always digging out our feelings and talking about them. Men have such different definitions placed on them that it can be very hard to find a directive suggestion that works.

A man can be confident (even with a small penis apparently) and still be able to meet the needs of his family or lovers without being brutal and unappealingly macho. Men can be confident and still be respectful and get the job done. The most confident men in the world are the ones that are able to look at themselves honestly and still realize that they don’t have to pretend or be perfect upon coming home. So often men have to guess about what is expected of them. A confident man knows what he expects of himself and delivers the goods on his own terms. A confident man knows that if he is shot down, even with his buddies watching, that he hasn’t made a serious mistake by going after a woman that is “out of his league.” A confident man is able to look at himself seriously and honestly and find that there is more good in them every time they look. Self acceptance and confidence go hand in hand.

So the next time you find yourself explaining to your testosterone driven desires that she is all kinds of “out of your league,” simply walking over to her and talking to her is a display of confidence. Don’t bother with psyching yourself out any longer. It just isn’t worth it.

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