Quote from Gguwad on January 25, 2024, 4:38 pm

Truly it seems I uncovered some very useful idea that probably for many is very intuitive or obvious, yet I will share it regardless.

I thought about what exactly is confidence, what makes a person confident, and as I improved myself I got stronger, I grew taller, I trained my voice to speak more clearly, I learned social dynamics, I of course always honed my understand and critical thinking, and yet, with all that, there was still something lacking, something that caused me to not be confident.

I could be only confident artificially but if someone knew me well and was able to push my buttons I would crumble, and I looked back, were the people in my past and in the present having some greater understanding about the world that I didn't? Well, that's very doubtful given a lot of them were very simple people that didn't think about such things at all so it couldn't be some hidden understanding.

So another very sensible option is that maybe they had experience in talking with others, but even if it seems to make sense, there are confident children, 10 year olds, high schoolers, young adults and there I was still less confident than them even though I was older and I know for a fact there are less confident people who are far older than me ( e.g. Elon Musk ). So paradoxically it couldn't be experience too.

Maybe that's just nature, I thought finally, maybe some are like that, maybe some aren't, and I truly believed that for some time, but it was weird to me, that one cannot at least force himself to do it, given enough training, it should be doable and yet after so long, I was still only artificially confident, so I thought, what makes me different from a lot of confident people.

And I started to look back at myself when I was younger, I remember I was confident then, and then, in secondary school I stopped being that, why would that be, I thought more, and I finally recalled that in secondary school I decided to be more understanding person, a person who thinks about what he says as I was quite assholish in my primary school, and I became far more empathetical person, a person who tried to understand others and with that, also a lot more quiet person.

And then it hit me, what makes one confident is lack of thinking, there can be a confident rambling fool or a shy expert, there is no golden nugget of knowledge that makes you confident, it's not even about experience, it's about thinking less, it's about being able to say things that you feel, without much care about what others think.

And truly, I tried, to think less, to just say what I want, to just force myself to not think much about what I say, and somehow, amazingly, the effects were immediate, of course the effects being as good as they are in large part because I studied power dynamics, articulation, have strong values I'm going toward, but also, those things are not needed, I would just sound more stupid, and be less respected, but still I would be confident in myself ( so called fool ).

And it's truly amazing to me that I somehow fooled myself into thinking I am just unable to be confident, for years, it's ridiculous, but at least I'm happy I got to the point I am in right now.

Now, of course it didn't take many days since I had this realization so this effect may fade, we will see, and also it was not as effective as I started living with this idea as I am now and few things I quickly realized, whenever they will be helpful or not are:

1. Be expressive in both words and body: Just saying stuff you think while looking at the wall or at your feet will not make you seem confident, being able to make eye contact, move your body freely as you speak freely is paramount to truly seem confident and feel confident.
2. Don't be reactive: Even if you don't think much what you say you still need to unconsciously give yourself some time to think for your words to not be mumbo jumbo, and to not seem insecure, you can't just immediately respond the moment someone else stops speaking, ideally you should take as much time as you see fit but at the very least give yourself 1 second before speaking.
3. Be goal oriented: Don't just sit in your head thinking what you will say and how will you respond to various situations, it will only make you more reactive and less expressive, so instead focus on what you want to do now ( go for a walk, read a book ), and do it, letting others get to your head too much will only tire you out.

So, that's all for now, I will be seeing how this goes, if you had ever similar realization, or have something to add feel free.

Edit: ChatGPT typo correction goes brrrr