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Other ways of building confidence ?

Discussion in 'Self Improvement' started by Kman20, Jan 29, 2018.

  1. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

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    Ive found that the root cause of a lot of problems I have are caused by just a lack of self confidence. Now I take cold showers and try to run for at least 30 minutes everyday and those give me some confidence but I’m looking for other ways I could become more confident in myself. I stay home often and not really pursuing anything so I was wondering if anyone had any advice on here. Well I’m sure a lotnof people on this site have advice with confidence so that’s why I’m even asking. What things do you guys do to be self confident, ways of thinking, what actions, etc. I want to be confident in myself and who I am from now on, please help.
     
  2. Cold showers exercise and nofap are great.
    Take a look at your diet, eat protein vegetables and fruits, cut the carbs
    Read. (Try 12 rules for life, Jordan Peterson for starters)
    Get up same time everyday
    Eat protein rich breakfast
    Stand and walk without slouching.
    Pursue education / career, not your 'dream' but something you can do well at.
    Talk to women you dont know to be nice, ignore the 'hot' ones, look for the ones who are friendly to you.
     
    Doitin2017, Choca007, kayesem and 2 others like this.
  3. Little kitty

    Little kitty Fapstronaut

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    Wow this is great advice
     
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  4. Kman20 likes this.
  5. TruChange

    TruChange Fapstronaut

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    Do One Thing Everyday That Scares You...

    That's all you need to do.
     
    Deleted Account likes this.
  6. franco216

    franco216 Fapstronaut

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    That's a great question and something I need an answer for, too.

    I got a great boost of confidence recently when I met some people on vacation (it was an organized tour, I didn't know the people before and it turned out a really cool group).

    As others pointed out, it generally helps to challenge yourself and build up self confidence gradually from all the smaller and bigger achievements.

    What I do, when I'm depressed and nothing seems to help: I think of one nice thing I gonna do that day - just one thing that makes me look forward to my day. It's usually good enough a reason to get up and get going.

    Another thing that helps me - but it's a bit more complicated:

    I believe, basically everyone has one major challenge going on at every particular time in their life. And it's not what you think it is. E.g. when you struggle with you college grades, that's a superficial thing. Same when you are unemployed and you run out of money - I'm not trying to downplay those problems, which can be grave - but, to me, there were very specific challenges on a psychological level. And it took years until my issue surfaced and I was ready to face them one by one. Examples:

    • During all of my time in high school, my main challenge was arrogance. I kept people at a distance from me, even though they were very friendly (or maybe because they were very friendly) - and it took until the last years in high school until I realized that I do indeed have good friends - if I'm only willing to reciprocate (which I was not). I never realized how bad my arrogance was, because I was in denial.
    • During my time as a student my major challenge was discipline. I was rather willing to give up on my dreams of becoming a great physicist than to get my act together and learn like everyone else. I thought I would be smarter than everyone, that I wouldn't need to sit down and learn 4 hours a day. That really was just wishful thinking because there was that one thing I couldn't face: That I lack focus and dedication (basically: that my father was right, that I'm lazy).
    • Before I discovered nofap, I thought my sexuality is alright - I'm just unlucky with women. Boy, was I oblivious ... I jerked of regularly to increasingly bad Hentai and waited for my love life to fix itself ...
    Now how does that relate to your question?

    Growing self confidence is a long-term project. It's like trying to get on top of a building: There are hundred ways of getting up there, but - for me - only once I discovered those hard issues and started to fix them, I could actually make progress. Nofap turned out to be a great source of self-esteem for me. Maybe you find other things. And whenever you climbed a story, there waits the next hurdle - so you think you have self esteem issues, but trying to approach the problem, you might have to start fixing a number of things - what those are, God knows.

    Just further examples out of my live:

    Having positive experiences with strangers (eventually turning them into friends) is a great way to boost self confidence. What's stopping you? If you want to be more social but you can't, there might be social anxiety involved. Be open to different ways to socialize. Board gaming, sports, random chats with people on the street, ...

    Getting things done is another great way of gaining self confidence. Do you have interesting hobbies? What's keeping you from growing them into bigger and bigger projects? Maybe try out small, but never stop improving!

    Do you learn new things like languages, a challenging computer game, the capitals of all the countries in the world, ...? What's stopping you of being interested in all the stuff that is out there?

    Eat healthy and grow some muscles. Try out new sports, increase your running distance. What's stopping you from being awesome? ...

    ----

    I think it's a good idea to walk through that process step by step: There is thing, you want to pursue. In case you succeed and reach your set goal, it will be a source of self esteem and give your life meaning. Now, in case you don't succeed and things don't go the way you like: At what point did you stop? Where did you run out of will power? What exactly went on in your head? What kind of thoughts stopped you? Are there limiting beliefs that you need to get rid of?

    When was the last time you were inspired by something? When did you work with passion on something the last time? How was that feeling? Can you recreate it? What would you need to change in your life to be again in this blissful state? What's keeping you from taking those measures?
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2018
    kayesem and sectumsempra like this.
  7. Emancipator

    Emancipator Fapstronaut

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    Self talk is important. Do speak better towards yourself than you do friends, strangers?

    Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich is a great book on the topic.
     
  8. Emancipator

    Emancipator Fapstronaut

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    Yep. I think most people already do, they just don't realize it. They make a mistake, and out comes, "I'm such an idoit". "I suck, I'll never learn this etc.

    I've been working on it for the past four years, and my life has improved as a result. I deal with failure much better now.
     
  9. elevate

    elevate Fapstronaut

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    Repeated courage leads to competence. Repeated competence leads to confidence. Repeated confidence leads to more courage.

    Have the courage to embarrass yourself. To fail repeatedly. To get rejected. To get hurt. To be rejected.

    You have to work and take risks for confidence.

    What do you want to be confident at? Have the courage to face pain, problems, and negative experiences with it. You procrastinate in doing this because how it is doesn't match your ideal of how it's supposed to be. You're "supposed" to be confident and smooth before even trying something, but in reality you start off incompetent at something. Perfectionism also holds you back. Unless you have a guaranteed outcome you fear taking action.

    You can't escape pain, problems, and negative experiences. If you do, you also limit your pleasures, solutions, and positive experiences.
     
  10. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

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    I've related to this recently when I did something foolish in front of people the other day and instead of letting it destroy me I kind of just laughed it off as me being a clutz and didn't take it personally or anything. From that foolish thing I surprisingly felt an abscence of my ego and I was pretty confident. It felt as if even if I did fail at anything that it was okay and if I did something good that's cool to. I guess the point is that I've always tried to portray this image of me being perfect and everything to other people but when I let myself just be real and LET MYSELF FAIL and make mistakes my ego dies. I think controlling my ego by allowing myself to fail and not try to be thing perfect can do everything person and doing other things to build my confidence like exercise and hobbies are a big help.
     
    TD2511 and elevate like this.
  11. elevate

    elevate Fapstronaut

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    Most people think that failure is bad, but it's part of the process of getting competent and confident at something. So many people avoid it and end up stuck before the starting line.

    Same thing with perfectionism. A lot of people want to be smooth and flawless, but it's imperfection that reminds us that we're all in this together. Being real allows people to connect with us far easier than trying to hide your flaws.

    In terms of attraction, people don't care if you're perfect, they care if you're perfectly fine with being your imperfect self.
     
  12. elevate

    elevate Fapstronaut

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    Gain confidence by failing so big and so often that the failures that you originally feared no longer holds you back. The more you're willing to fail the higher your success rate will be.
     
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  13. elevate

    elevate Fapstronaut

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    Care about things that are more important than failure. Care about things that are more important than outcomes. About things that are more important than things you can't control.

    Behave and do things with your life that makes you proud and happy regardless of the outcome.

    This way you'll attract people that are aligned with who you really are.

    Rather than trying to force an outcome and attract people who are just simply uninterested in you.
     
    kayesem and Kman20 like this.
  14. Well said.
     
  15. simonfreemason

    simonfreemason Fapstronaut

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    I agree with seeking out those who are nice and make you happy, but the ignoring attractive people sounds like quitting a game before you can lose. Which comes from a mindset of feeling inferior to those people. Not my idea of winning.
     
    Kman20 likes this.
  16. Think of something that scares you write it down, then challenge yourself to do it
     
  17. kayesem

    kayesem Fapstronaut

    Like (for me) to leave the house and just walk. Every day. For 1 hour. If it still scares you, repeat it. It took months to build new circuits around the fear, so they finally led straight to the thought; 'Look, it's not so bad, it's even enjoyable once you get going. What on earth was all the fuss about?' ... now i barely think about it and just do it. I feel better afterwards, 99% of the time. There are occasional douchebags, nutcases and scary moments, but for the most part it's good, and builds confidence that the world is a fairly decent place to be. Seeing little children out cruising around with their parents is my favourite part of walking lately. They are so open and funny and courageous, fearless despite me often being 3 - 4 times their size. They smile and wave and laugh and say hello, or do funny things like give me an inquisitive look, scream and make crazy sounds etc.
    Me too. Practice breaking free from the comfort zone. It's hard but it gets worse the longer you stay in it.

    I have just ordered Jordan Peterson's book, as recommended by @JackStrident .

    Doing heaps of small, difficult things helps build confidence up. It does seem to all begin with having the courage to turn healthy thoughts and inclinations into healthy actions and modes of being.
     
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  18. Hot is different than attractive. When you are sexually triggered by someone's appearance you are not actually looking at them. What triggers you does not last and has no meaning. There is also a sickening attachment that occurs where sex addicts miss take their continued state of being triggered by someone ( even though they have clearly ignored the signals that there is no connection ) with 'loyalty'. They end up in a vicious circle of aroused rejection and fantasy.
    So yeah the point is to get to the point where you are no longer triggered, and most certainly not acting out of that state or pretending it's motivating.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 6, 2018
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  19. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

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    I like this because I want to get to a point where I don’t feel inferior and superior to others and just see us all as equals so I’ll try to seek out so called “superior” people to interact with when I can.
     
  20. Kman20

    Kman20 Fapstronaut

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    Thanks for this reply. Yeah I'm trying to find reasons to get outside more other than just walking since it's winter here, like getting a haircut or going to the store etc.
     
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