The Myth of Confidence
05 Nov 2013, 4:58 pm
http://www.happierabroad.com/forum/view ... highlight=
Quote:
Below is a copy of an email essay I sent out to a few dozen people in the “self-help” industry about 5 years ago. Predictably I only got a handful of responses. And of course they all insisted I was wrong. After all, their livelihoods depend on maintaining the myths I debunk. But they offered no evidence to disprove me, nor any useful insights.
When I read Winston's excellent blog on "attitude extremists" it reminded me of what I had written. So I thought I'd post it here for your enjoyment. You'll notice I list 3 areas to focus on in order to improve confidence. Of course if I were writing this today I'd add a 4th: Get the hell out of the US!
THE MYTH OF CONFIDENCE
If I had a dime for every time someone told me to “be confident”, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. And as a millionaire, I’d probably have a lot of women throwing themselves at me and a lot of men respecting & admiring me. And the inevitable result of all this would be… You guessed it!.., Confidence. So the next time you feel like telling someone to be confident, just throw them a dime instead. It’d be a thousand times more useful.
In fact, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the last few years. All of a sudden, everyone’s talking about confidence. (or it’s close relative, “self-esteem”) Everywhere I read, every show I watch, every dimestore shrink I consult. Everyone’s advising everyone else to be more confident.
(a hypothetical: What if everybody took this advice and suddenly everyone had perfect confidence? Wouldn’t it just level the playing field right back to where it already was, and thus, not make a damn bit of difference anyway???)
Suddenly, all the women on the dating shows and in the advice columns are telling us how much they’re attracted to this mysterious new quality called confidence. And conversely, how the lack of confidence is a big turn-off. And predictably, men now feel the need to brag about how confident they are. And the confidence fad seems to be growing at a rapid pace. But I’m about to point out how it’s all just the psychological equivalent of the Pet Rock fad from the 70’s. Like the Pet Rock, advising someone to “be confident” is useless and does nothing. But like the Pet rock, it allows the giver to feel like they did something nice. They didn’t. Yet people keep buying it & buying it & buying it.
The reality about confidence is so simple and so obvious, it amazes me that otherwise intelligent people haven’t figured it out. Or maybe they have figured it out and they’re too dishonest with themselves to admit it. Perhaps the reality is too uncomfortable. After all, it’s much easier to sell books and self-help courses with fantasy than with reality.
So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you. You can not just decide to be confident. Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence. Confidence without success is delusional and/or dishonest, thus fake, and others will quickly recognize it as such. Here’s why: It’s not really the confidence itself that people are attracted to. Confidence is merely what results when someone has the qualities that are really attracting us. Obviously, if someone is good-looking, or wealthy, or funny & quick-witted, others will be attracted to them. This, in turn, will give them confidence.
So when someone tells you they are attracted to confidence, they are lying! (whether consciously or subconsciously) What they’re really attracted to are the traits that make confidence possible. After all, we all know that wealth, good looks, and strong social skills are attractive to others. Are we to believe it’s just a coincidence that these are the very same traits that lead to confidence? Obviously, someone who is successful will have more confidence than someone who is unsuccessful. So when someone says they’re attracted to confidence, what it means is that they’re attracted to success & the factors that make success possible. The confidence itself merely exists as a sign that those other factors (the real attractors) are present.
So if you know or care about someone with low confidence, how can you help them? First, the worst thing you can do is to just tell them to “be confident” or give them a verbal list of traits they should be confident about. That’s just insulting their intelligence and it’s going to frustrate and depress them even more. Words are hollow and meaningless when not corroborated by actions. So if you truly want to help someone increase their confidence, here are the areas you should focus on improving:
1) Physical Appearance
2) Social Skills
3) Wealth
1) Physical Appearance
(So you think this is shallow? It is. Get over it. Physical appearance is, of course, the first thing people notice about you. And if they don’t like what they see, it will be much, much harder to win them over.)
If the individual has flaws in their appearance, the worst thing you can do is to tell them they “look fine”. Instead, help them improve their appearance. If they’re overweight, don’t deny it. Help them lose the weight. If they have bad hair, help them find a stylish cut. If they have unfashionable or ill-fitting clothes, help them find better ones. And if you are not qualified to help them in these areas, find someone who can.
2) Social Skills
This one could easily become a chicken-or-egg argument. Many would point out that a person does poorly socially because they lack confidence. While this may be true in certain cases, I’ve found in my own experience and observations that usually the reverse is true. When a person has poor social skills, they will of course do poorly socially & inevitably, their confidence will suffer. When confronted with this fact, the lazy-minded will regurgitate such hackneyed social advice as “be happy and smile more”, “just be yourself”, “be upbeat and positive”, “just be nice”, or something equally trite, short-sighted, and useless. Being nice is fine. I’d encourage it. But it’s simply not enough on it’s own to succeed socially. If all you are is nice, you will be walked on like a doormat, used, and thrown away. To truly succeed socially (in the absence of looks and wealth), one needs two things: Material and Execution. They need strong, interesting conversational material and they need to be able to execute this material in a smooth, charming manner. How can you expect someone to have social confidence if they lack this ability?
So if you honestly cared about someone suffering from low social confidence, you wouldn’t waste their time with empty “be yourself” pep talks. You’d help them learn and practice conversational skills in a supportive, rejection-free environment. However, if you are outside of their age group, find someone closer to their age to help them. This is because what is acceptable for 50-year olds is not acceptable for 20-year olds and vice versa.
3) Wealth
Unless you are in a position to give someone a job earning $50K+ a year, there’s not a lot you can do about this one. But if you focus on the first two (appearance & social skills), increased income is virtually guaranteed to follow.
To recap my main points:
* Confidence is merely a byproduct of success.
* No one can just decide or choose to be confident. It has to come naturally from others.
* Our level of confidence is determined by the level of regard others have for us.
* Hollow “be confident’ pep talks don’t work. If you honestly want to increase another’s confidence, it will require genuine care and effort.
* Therefore, stop advising people to “be confident”! If you aren’t willing to put in the effort to help them gain that confidence, then you are just insulting them and wasting their time.
When I read Winston's excellent blog on "attitude extremists" it reminded me of what I had written. So I thought I'd post it here for your enjoyment. You'll notice I list 3 areas to focus on in order to improve confidence. Of course if I were writing this today I'd add a 4th: Get the hell out of the US!
THE MYTH OF CONFIDENCE
If I had a dime for every time someone told me to “be confident”, I’d probably be a millionaire by now. And as a millionaire, I’d probably have a lot of women throwing themselves at me and a lot of men respecting & admiring me. And the inevitable result of all this would be… You guessed it!.., Confidence. So the next time you feel like telling someone to be confident, just throw them a dime instead. It’d be a thousand times more useful.
In fact, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the last few years. All of a sudden, everyone’s talking about confidence. (or it’s close relative, “self-esteem”) Everywhere I read, every show I watch, every dimestore shrink I consult. Everyone’s advising everyone else to be more confident.
(a hypothetical: What if everybody took this advice and suddenly everyone had perfect confidence? Wouldn’t it just level the playing field right back to where it already was, and thus, not make a damn bit of difference anyway???)
Suddenly, all the women on the dating shows and in the advice columns are telling us how much they’re attracted to this mysterious new quality called confidence. And conversely, how the lack of confidence is a big turn-off. And predictably, men now feel the need to brag about how confident they are. And the confidence fad seems to be growing at a rapid pace. But I’m about to point out how it’s all just the psychological equivalent of the Pet Rock fad from the 70’s. Like the Pet Rock, advising someone to “be confident” is useless and does nothing. But like the Pet rock, it allows the giver to feel like they did something nice. They didn’t. Yet people keep buying it & buying it & buying it.
The reality about confidence is so simple and so obvious, it amazes me that otherwise intelligent people haven’t figured it out. Or maybe they have figured it out and they’re too dishonest with themselves to admit it. Perhaps the reality is too uncomfortable. After all, it’s much easier to sell books and self-help courses with fantasy than with reality.
So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you. You can not just decide to be confident. Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence. Confidence without success is delusional and/or dishonest, thus fake, and others will quickly recognize it as such. Here’s why: It’s not really the confidence itself that people are attracted to. Confidence is merely what results when someone has the qualities that are really attracting us. Obviously, if someone is good-looking, or wealthy, or funny & quick-witted, others will be attracted to them. This, in turn, will give them confidence.
So when someone tells you they are attracted to confidence, they are lying! (whether consciously or subconsciously) What they’re really attracted to are the traits that make confidence possible. After all, we all know that wealth, good looks, and strong social skills are attractive to others. Are we to believe it’s just a coincidence that these are the very same traits that lead to confidence? Obviously, someone who is successful will have more confidence than someone who is unsuccessful. So when someone says they’re attracted to confidence, what it means is that they’re attracted to success & the factors that make success possible. The confidence itself merely exists as a sign that those other factors (the real attractors) are present.
So if you know or care about someone with low confidence, how can you help them? First, the worst thing you can do is to just tell them to “be confident” or give them a verbal list of traits they should be confident about. That’s just insulting their intelligence and it’s going to frustrate and depress them even more. Words are hollow and meaningless when not corroborated by actions. So if you truly want to help someone increase their confidence, here are the areas you should focus on improving:
1) Physical Appearance
2) Social Skills
3) Wealth
1) Physical Appearance
(So you think this is shallow? It is. Get over it. Physical appearance is, of course, the first thing people notice about you. And if they don’t like what they see, it will be much, much harder to win them over.)
If the individual has flaws in their appearance, the worst thing you can do is to tell them they “look fine”. Instead, help them improve their appearance. If they’re overweight, don’t deny it. Help them lose the weight. If they have bad hair, help them find a stylish cut. If they have unfashionable or ill-fitting clothes, help them find better ones. And if you are not qualified to help them in these areas, find someone who can.
2) Social Skills
This one could easily become a chicken-or-egg argument. Many would point out that a person does poorly socially because they lack confidence. While this may be true in certain cases, I’ve found in my own experience and observations that usually the reverse is true. When a person has poor social skills, they will of course do poorly socially & inevitably, their confidence will suffer. When confronted with this fact, the lazy-minded will regurgitate such hackneyed social advice as “be happy and smile more”, “just be yourself”, “be upbeat and positive”, “just be nice”, or something equally trite, short-sighted, and useless. Being nice is fine. I’d encourage it. But it’s simply not enough on it’s own to succeed socially. If all you are is nice, you will be walked on like a doormat, used, and thrown away. To truly succeed socially (in the absence of looks and wealth), one needs two things: Material and Execution. They need strong, interesting conversational material and they need to be able to execute this material in a smooth, charming manner. How can you expect someone to have social confidence if they lack this ability?
So if you honestly cared about someone suffering from low social confidence, you wouldn’t waste their time with empty “be yourself” pep talks. You’d help them learn and practice conversational skills in a supportive, rejection-free environment. However, if you are outside of their age group, find someone closer to their age to help them. This is because what is acceptable for 50-year olds is not acceptable for 20-year olds and vice versa.
3) Wealth
Unless you are in a position to give someone a job earning $50K+ a year, there’s not a lot you can do about this one. But if you focus on the first two (appearance & social skills), increased income is virtually guaranteed to follow.
To recap my main points:
* Confidence is merely a byproduct of success.
* No one can just decide or choose to be confident. It has to come naturally from others.
* Our level of confidence is determined by the level of regard others have for us.
* Hollow “be confident’ pep talks don’t work. If you honestly want to increase another’s confidence, it will require genuine care and effort.
* Therefore, stop advising people to “be confident”! If you aren’t willing to put in the effort to help them gain that confidence, then you are just insulting them and wasting their time.
What does everyone think of this? I for one mostly agree. If confidence is such a key factor than why did I succeed in jump-starting my wife's vehicle despite the fact that I did not believe I could do it, thinking I would blow out her engine, and kept giving myself negative vibes? Why was the outcome independent of the belief in my ability and my thoughts?
05 Nov 2013, 6:49 pm
cubedemon6073 wrote:
So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
He's wrong about this. The most supremely confident people are actually internally confident. They aren't reacting to other peoples' opinions about them. That is what is magnetically attractive about true confience- that it can't be shaken by the negative opinions of others. People whose confidence is on much shakier ground will have it rise or fall in accordance with the opinions of others. That is weak confidence because it is externally controlled. That the author thinks this weak confidence is all there is just shows he has a massive blind spot.
.
Quote:
You can not just decide to be confident. Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Only shaky, flimsy confidence requires support from others. That isn't true confidence. He's right that you can't just snap your fingers and have confidence appear. It takes longer. That's why the aphorism "fake it till you make it" exists. There is lag time between trying to be confident and actually being confident. But it doesn't require the approval of others. The most confident people are the ones who do what they do in spite of ubiquitous criticism.
Quote:
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence. Confidence without success is delusional
.....it can be, if it is following a path that will inevitably lead to failure. But it isn't always delusional. Sometimes it's just forward thinking.Quote:
and/or dishonest, thus fake, and others will quickly recognize it as such.
he is completely wrong about this.Quote:
Here’s why: It’s not really the confidence itself that people are attracted to. Confidence is merely what results when someone has the qualities that are really attracting us. Obviously, if someone is good-looking, or wealthy, or funny & quick-witted, others will be attracted to them. This, in turn, will give them confidence.
If somebody is all those things, people will be attracted to them. But oddly enough, it isn't that attraction that gives people confidence. Some have confidence and those things. Some lack confidence and have those things. Some don't have those things and still have confidence.Quote:
What does everyone think of this? I for one mostly agree. If confidence is such a key factor than why did I succeed in jump-starting my wife's vehicle despite the fact that I did not believe I could do it, thinking I would blow out her engine, and kept giving myself negative vibes? Why was the outcome independent of the belief in my ability and my thoughts?
You could jump start her car despite your lack of confidence because the outcome was not dependent on your confidence. That is key.
I think this guy is all kinds of wrong. He doesn't actually understand what confidence is and doesn't realize that confidence in the face of failure is not fake or dishonest even if it may be delusional.
05 Nov 2013, 9:21 pm
Quote:
So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
He's wrong about this. The most supremely confident people are actually internally confident. They aren't reacting to other peoples' opinions about them. That is what is magnetically attractive about true confience- that it can't be shaken by the negative opinions of others. People whose confidence is on much shakier ground will have it rise or fall in accordance with the opinions of others. That is weak confidence because it is externally controlled. That the author thinks this weak confidence is all there is just shows he has a massive blind spot.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
He's wrong about this. The most supremely confident people are actually internally confident. They aren't reacting to other peoples' opinions about them. That is what is magnetically attractive about true confience- that it can't be shaken by the negative opinions of others. People whose confidence is on much shakier ground will have it rise or fall in accordance with the opinions of others. That is weak confidence because it is externally controlled. That the author thinks this weak confidence is all there is just shows he has a massive blind spot.
I do not follow what you are saying and here is why. One's thoughts, ideas, and experiences are both shaped by your environment and genetics. One's emotions and emotional state is a reaction to an outside stimulus. For example, if a deer hears a lion roar the deer may feel fear and run. Did the deer's fear cause the lion to roar? It's akin to saying that the birth of the baby caused the mother's pregnancy. I don't get this whole confidence bit at all.
Quote:
You can not just decide to be confident. Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Only shaky, flimsy confidence requires support from others. That isn't true confidence. He's right that you can't just snap your fingers and have confidence appear. It takes longer. That's why the aphorism "fake it till you make it" exists. There is lag time between trying to be confident and actually being confident. But it doesn't require the approval of others. The most confident people are the ones who do what they do in spite of ubiquitous criticism.
Only shaky, flimsy confidence requires support from others. That isn't true confidence. He's right that you can't just snap your fingers and have confidence appear. It takes longer. That's why the aphorism "fake it till you make it" exists. There is lag time between trying to be confident and actually being confident. But it doesn't require the approval of others. The most confident people are the ones who do what they do in spite of ubiquitous criticism.
Again, I don't understand. How is it possible to fake the belief that one can do something when he can't?
Quote:
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence. Confidence without success is delusional
.....it can be, if it is following a path that will inevitably lead to failure. But it isn't always delusional. Sometimes it's just forward thinking.[/quote]Will you please explain further?
Quote:
and/or dishonest, thus fake, and others will quickly recognize it as such. he is completely wrong about this.
How is he wrong?
Quote:
Here’s why: It’s not really the confidence itself that people are attracted to. Confidence is merely what results when someone has the qualities that are really attracting us. Obviously, if someone is good-looking, or wealthy, or funny & quick-witted, others will be attracted to them. This, in turn, will give them confidence. If somebody is all those things, people will be attracted to them. But oddly enough, it isn't that attraction that gives people confidence. Some have confidence and those things. Some lack confidence and have those things. Some don't have those things and still have confidence.
Where does confidence come from?
Quote:
What does everyone think of this? I for one mostly agree. If confidence is such a key factor than why did I succeed in jump-starting my wife's vehicle despite the fact that I did not believe I could do it, thinking I would blow out her engine, and kept giving myself negative vibes? Why was the outcome independent of the belief in my ability and my thoughts?
You could jump start her car despite your lack of confidence because the outcome was not dependent on your confidence. That is key. [/quote]
Yes, I was able to overrule those thoughts and chose to do so because I used the logic of negation. I had doubts about my doubts and I could've had fallacious reasoning so I decided to take a chance and I succeeded. I used Logic to overcome my lack of confidence. I had negative thinking. I used a form of rational negative thinking to block the thoughts. How do the claims of negative thinking hold up at all?
Positive and Negative thinking comes from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction
Do they have any empirical proof for their claims?
Let's say scientific and laboratory tests were performed and the claims were true. I have a situation in which I put out all kinds of negative energy and I received positive results.
Quote:
I think this guy is all kinds of wrong. He doesn't actually understand what confidence is and doesn't realize that confidence in the face of failure is not fake or dishonest even if it may be delusional.
I will accept the possibility that I am operating under faulty reasoning. If I have faulty premises and assumptions and so does he what are they?
I had major problems trying to find a job in IT. This describes my thoughts and reasoning. http://whyifailedinamerica.wordpress.co ... mployment/
Be warned it is very long.
Telling me I need to get confidence and change my attitude tells me nothing, tells the author of this post nothing and tells Winston wu the creator of the website the post is on nothing. If you go through all of the author's post he speaks about his music being torn to shreds despite all of the confidence he had that he was excellent. Winston Wu could not get a date in America whatsoever. I don't know what his employment life was like but it would not surprise if he was floundering as well. He left America because of all this and he seems very happy. He seems like he is successful and found a solution abroad.
This begs the question for me. Would I be able to have more success somewhere else as well?
Part of the scientific method is the idea of falsifiability. If someone states the assertion that one's attitude and lack of confidence is causing my, his problems and Winston Wu's problems then how is falsifiability able to be applied here if by the act of falsifying is considered negative thinking. People have said this on various websites concerning confidence and positivity. Even Fnord seems to accept this whole confidence, lack of confidence, positivity and negativity as truth and promotes it as gospel truth without performing the scientific method on it and using rationality. It makes no logical sense to me and boggles my mind. It makes no sense and to me Fnord and lots of people in America seem to have these contradictory beliefs. If my reasoning is faulty then how is it faulty?
Last edited by cubedemon6073 on 06 Nov 2013, 6:58 am, edited 3 times in total.
06 Nov 2013, 12:46 am
I believe it's all circumstantial. The OP is partially right, but so is Janissy.
We have to first know what type of confidence are we discussing here. We can't just discuss one general overall type of confidence as if it's all one unit. Just like memory and intelligence, there should be several types.
In my case, I may be internally confident when it comes to my logical thinking ability skills that if someone were to call me unintelligent my confidence would not be shaken by it, but I lack confidence when it comes to socializing and need approval from others to have my confidence increased (and if my confidence ever does significantly improve, it would still be reliant on the opinions of others).
Of course, to make things trickier, confidence that was externally built could eventually be converted to confidence that is maintained and secured internally, and vice versa.
And that, my friends, is my answer to this dilemma.
06 Nov 2013, 9:19 am
Kurgan wrote:
Actually, faking confidence yields the desired result in many cases. The most notable example is job interviews (and particularly interviews for jobs that do not require degrees).
True, but that's why there's the saying, "Fake it until you make it."
The essay is correct. When the circumstances are correct, confidence is a natural by-product. You can't obtain "confidence" without them. You must fabricate it in your attitude (fake it) by focusing on the meager things about you that are good.
06 Nov 2013, 9:52 am
I think it is written by a person that totally lacks any selfbases self esteem, that is unable to give himself any worth, and so is forced to please other people as much as possible, so that by comforting them, they credit him a worth, he himself is not able to give himself.
He doesnt even denie that, as many others do, but make his selfhating and lack of self esteem even into the core of all his theories: "So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you."
What he proudly writes, is normally a diagnostic criteria of people with an narcisstic personality disorder.
Quote:
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence.
Whats if I am surrounded by Nazis? Should I then not have far more reason to be worried? Quote:
When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence.
Directly opposing group whose oppinions you denie, and getting rejected by them, does not feel bad in any way. Quote:
Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you.
As he mentioned himself in the start of his thread: Confident is the brother of self esteem. And as the word self esteem even involves in itself, self esteem must come from yourself. Depending your self esteem 100% from other peoples oppinion, makes you a clown, trying to comfort other people by all means, not a confident person. Quote:
You can not just decide to be confident.
Thats correct. Quote:
Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way.
Yop, because of no magic in this world existing, snapping your fingers and saying Abrakadabra is quiet useless. But there are more non-magical things like therapists and similar stuff existing, that are professionally trained to work with people, trying to find the reasons, why you are only able to accept other people as worthy, and so as well the worth they give you, while you denie yourself the same worth you give others, and so as well denie yourself to give yourself a worth. There are reasons behind that. There are selh-helping groups, there are therapists, there are internet forums for that cause.Quote:
Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Yop, thats sure why all the eremits and sheepers, spending their day with themselves all have to be totally unhappy, because of having noone, giving them the feeling of acceptance, that can only be given by others that have an worth, and never by yourself, because of you being worthless.Quote:
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence.
Yop, according to diagnostic criteria of people with narcistic personality order, this is correct. However, if you dont have an narcistic personality disorder, this is not correct.Quote:
Obviously, someone who is successful will have more confidence than someone who is unsuccessful.
There are tons of people, acchieving absolutely nothing extraordinary, having no problems with having confidence to stand up against some pseudo-confident lamers if they behave stupid. ^^
And the rest of the article is about how to manage, as an unconfident person, caring all the time unconfidently about other peoples oppinion, to look confident to others. So instead of an guide to acchieve confidence, its an guide to hide your own lack of confidence and faking and acting to be a confident person, instead of really working on your confidence problems.
He is totally right about advices like "Just be confident!" being stupid. But his solutions are only about faking confidence, while he totally ignores to actually receive real confidence in himself, by finding the reasons why you actually give your own person so less credit, that you denie yourself giving you a worth. Buying a suit or a car, wont help that.
06 Nov 2013, 10:35 am
Schneekugel wrote:
I think it is written by a person that totally lacks any selfbases self esteem, that is unable to give himself any worth, and so is forced to please other people as much as possible, so that by comforting them, they credit him a worth, he himself is not able to give himself.
He doesnt even denie that, as many others do, but make his selfhating and lack of self esteem even into the core of all his theories: "So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you."
What he proudly writes, is normally a diagnostic criteria of people with an narcisstic personality disorder.
And the rest of the article is about how to manage, as an unconfident person, caring all the time unconfidently about other peoples oppinion, to look confident to others. So instead of an guide to acchieve confidence, its an guide to hide your own lack of confidence and faking and acting to be a confident person, instead of really working on your confidence problems.
He is totally right about advices like "Just be confident!" being stupid. But his solutions are only about faking confidence, while he totally ignores to actually receive real confidence in himself, by finding the reasons why you actually give your own person so less credit, that you denie yourself giving you a worth. Buying a suit or a car, wont help that.
He doesnt even denie that, as many others do, but make his selfhating and lack of self esteem even into the core of all his theories: "So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you."
What he proudly writes, is normally a diagnostic criteria of people with an narcisstic personality disorder.
Quote:
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence.
Whats if I am surrounded by Nazis? Should I then not have far more reason to be worried? Quote:
When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence.
Directly opposing group whose oppinions you denie, and getting rejected by them, does not feel bad in any way. Quote:
Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you.
As he mentioned himself in the start of his thread: Confident is the brother of self esteem. And as the word self esteem even involves in itself, self esteem must come from yourself. Depending your self esteem 100% from other peoples oppinion, makes you a clown, trying to comfort other people by all means, not a confident person. Quote:
You can not just decide to be confident.
Thats correct. Quote:
Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way.
Yop, because of no magic in this world existing, snapping your fingers and saying Abrakadabra is quiet useless. But there are more non-magical things like therapists and similar stuff existing, that are professionally trained to work with people, trying to find the reasons, why you are only able to accept other people as worthy, and so as well the worth they give you, while you denie yourself the same worth you give others, and so as well denie yourself to give yourself a worth. There are reasons behind that. There are selh-helping groups, there are therapists, there are internet forums for that cause.Quote:
Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Yop, thats sure why all the eremits and sheepers, spending their day with themselves all have to be totally unhappy, because of having noone, giving them the feeling of acceptance, that can only be given by others that have an worth, and never by yourself, because of you being worthless.Quote:
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence.
Yop, according to diagnostic criteria of people with narcistic personality order, this is correct. However, if you dont have an narcistic personality disorder, this is not correct.Quote:
Obviously, someone who is successful will have more confidence than someone who is unsuccessful.
There are tons of people, acchieving absolutely nothing extraordinary, having no problems with having confidence to stand up against some pseudo-confident lamers if they behave stupid. ^^And the rest of the article is about how to manage, as an unconfident person, caring all the time unconfidently about other peoples oppinion, to look confident to others. So instead of an guide to acchieve confidence, its an guide to hide your own lack of confidence and faking and acting to be a confident person, instead of really working on your confidence problems.
He is totally right about advices like "Just be confident!" being stupid. But his solutions are only about faking confidence, while he totally ignores to actually receive real confidence in himself, by finding the reasons why you actually give your own person so less credit, that you denie yourself giving you a worth. Buying a suit or a car, wont help that.
Are you a medical professional to make such a diagnosis?
What symptoms does he display out of these traits and characteristics and can you detail and show how he displays them?
Quote:
But his solutions are only about faking confidence, while he totally ignores to actually receive real confidence in himself, by finding the reasons why you actually give your own person so less credit, that you denie yourself giving you a worth. Buying a suit or a car, wont help that.
Huh! How do you derive that his solutions are only about faking confidence? What he is saying is if one wants to do x aptitude, knowledge and skills have to be a factor as well. If one wants to do carpentry one has to learn the techniques of the trade, have money or other resources to obtain the proper tools, and have the physical ability to do it. One can't be confident in carpentry unless he learns the techniques and has the time and resources to hone and practice the talent. If one does not have money or skills one may need others to help finance you and/or to instruct you in the skills. A book could possibly work as well but confidence like he and Winston state is not a make all or break all.
Confidence is not a cause or an antecedent. It is an effect and a consequent. Confidence is an emotional state in which one has or lacks because of external and outside stimuli and maybe his genetics. Emotions like confidence are electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain that are triggered by outside stimuli. One can't choose to feel confident, happy, sad, angry or any other emotions. How the heck is this possible. It is possible to choose your actions though.
Even the most intelligent seems to persist in this delusion that one's thoughts create reality? How do most people even derive this? Even a lot of people on here seem to persist in this. Why? No wonder Winston Wu vamoosed out of this country.
06 Nov 2013, 11:20 am
cubedemon6073 wrote:
Are you a medical professional to make such a diagnosis?
What symptoms does he display out of these traits and characteristics and can you detail and show how he displays them?
As you can read, I have not written to have diagnosed him, but that things that he write match into diagnostic criteria of people with narcissistic personality disorder. As for Aspergers, they are clearly defined and written down. Narcists highly need admiration of other people and can even get into aggressively demanding them out of the main problem, that unlike other people they totally relie on other for self esteem and confidence. The reason why they always need to show others what great person they are, is because they need those other to be told by them, how great they are, because of the main problem of their illness, to give themselves any credit. That is not a blame, but not being able to give yourself any worth and so have confidence from it, is simply the core problem of the narcistic personality disorder.
So inventing an theory, that starts with convincing people about something that is the core symptom of an major illness, by telling them that they shall believe, what is a core symptom of narcisstic personality order, that worth can only be given by other persons, simply makes no sense for me. Its as if your giving an overweight person, the advice to loose weight by totally hating yourself and depending your worth and happyness, only by your body silhouette, which is the core symptom of an body image disorder. Good advices are to start doing a daily food list, writing down what you eat, then thinking about what to reduce, alternatives, ... While advising others to get on purpose a psychic illness, is weird.
Quote:
Quote:
But his solutions are only about faking confidence, while he totally ignores to actually receive real confidence in himself, by finding the reasons why you actually give your own person so less credit, that you denie yourself giving you a worth. Buying a suit or a car, wont help that.
Huh! How do you derive that his solutions are only about faking confidence? What he is saying is if one wants to do x aptitude, knowledge and skills have to be a factor as well. If one wants to do carpentry one has to learn the techniques of the trade, have money or other resources to obtain the proper tools, and have the physical ability to do it. One can't be confident in carpentry unless he learns the techniques and has the time and resources to hone and practice the talent. If one does not have money or skills one may need others to help finance you and/or to instruct you in the skills. A book could possibly work as well but confidence like he and Winston state is not a make all or break all.
So exactly how does he talk about learning the techniques of achieving self confidence? Where is his advice to analyze yourself and try to find the reason, why the hell you think so bad of yourself? How can he even give that advice, when the complete core of his theory, is that achieving that by yourself cannot be done in any way, so that you dont have the possibilities to learn that technique to become a carpenter? All he is talking about, how to convince people to tell him he was a carpenter. What use does it have, to make other people tell that you were a carpenter, if you yourself dont believe in being a carpenter?
Quote:
Confidence is not a cause or an antecedent. It is an effect and a consequent. Confidence is an emotional state in which one has or lacks because of external and outside stimuli and maybe his genetics. Emotions like confidence are electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain that are triggered by outside stimuli. One can't choose to feel confident, happy, sad, angry or any other emotions. How the heck is this possible. It is possible to choose your actions though.
Did you read my post? I have written how it is possible? Start analyzing yourself, therapy, ... People dont tell themselves automatically: "Uh, I am worthless. So confidence given by myself is worthless. Proudness in myself is worthless." As already written, yes you cannot choose by magic to become this or that. But as written as well, you can work on analyzing and understanding the reasons, why you are the way you are. And then work on becoming healthy again. If your leg is broken, you definitly cannot start jumping around. But you can work on healing it to be able to jump around again. Changing your personality isnt done by "simply ...", stop thinking about easy nonsense. But it can be done with professional help. While totally giving into it to be worthless, and to give your worth and confidence into the hand of other people, is simply giving up. Giving up is definitely no good advice. How exactly shall an advice, telling you to give up on achieving any self esteem and confidence, and to further let others do that for you, help you to achieve any self esteem and confidence?
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Even the most intelligent seems to persist in this delusion that one's thoughts create reality? How do most people even derive this? Even a lot of people on here seem to persist in this. Why? No wonder Winston Wu vamoosed out of this country.
Who wrote that were? I did not talk about wish-thinking, I talked about actually working on you, if necessary with professional help, starting to realize and understand the core of your problems to be finally be able to start working against that.
Professional therapy and psychology is nothing illusional, but something actually existing. Simply take a telephone book, and there will be plenty of real existing therapeuts be written in it, that will be much more able to help him to realize the problems leading him to lack the ability of any natural proudness in yourself, then an hairdresser.
The article refers all the time, about the problem to get others to give you confident.
Have you even thought, that if the writer of the article managed, to stop depending his worth upon others telling him "That he is such a good doggy.", that the moment he was able to realize that, he would as well no longer feel forced to feel bad, only because noone telling him otherwise? If you dont start depending your worth from other telling you to be a good doogie, then others not telling you what a good doggie you are, doesnt even become a problem.
06 Nov 2013, 1:28 pm
Schneekugel wrote:
cubedemon6073 wrote:
Are you a medical professional to make such a diagnosis?
What symptoms does he display out of these traits and characteristics and can you detail and show how he displays them?
As you can read, I have not written to have diagnosed him, but that things that he write match into diagnostic criteria of people with narcissistic personality disorder. As for Aspergers, they are clearly defined and written down. Narcists highly need admiration of other people and can even get into aggressively demanding them out of the main problem, that unlike other people they totally relie on other for self esteem and confidence. The reason why they always need to show others what great person they are, is because they need those other to be told by them, how great they are, because of the main problem of their illness, to give themselves any credit. That is not a blame, but not being able to give yourself any worth and so have confidence from it, is simply the core problem of the narcistic personality disorder.
So inventing an theory, that starts with convincing people about something that is the core symptom of an major illness, by telling them that they shall believe, what is a core symptom of narcisstic personality order, that worth can only be given by other persons, simply makes no sense for me. Its as if your giving an overweight person, the advice to loose weight by totally hating yourself and depending your worth and happyness, only by your body silhouette, which is the core symptom of an body image disorder. Good advices are to start doing a daily food list, writing down what you eat, then thinking about what to reduce, alternatives, ... While advising others to get on purpose a psychic illness, is weird.
Quote:
Quote:
But his solutions are only about faking confidence, while he totally ignores to actually receive real confidence in himself, by finding the reasons why you actually give your own person so less credit, that you denie yourself giving you a worth. Buying a suit or a car, wont help that.
Huh! How do you derive that his solutions are only about faking confidence? What he is saying is if one wants to do x aptitude, knowledge and skills have to be a factor as well. If one wants to do carpentry one has to learn the techniques of the trade, have money or other resources to obtain the proper tools, and have the physical ability to do it. One can't be confident in carpentry unless he learns the techniques and has the time and resources to hone and practice the talent. If one does not have money or skills one may need others to help finance you and/or to instruct you in the skills. A book could possibly work as well but confidence like he and Winston state is not a make all or break all.
So exactly how does he talk about learning the techniques of achieving self confidence? Where is his advice to analyze yourself and try to find the reason, why the hell you think so bad of yourself? How can he even give that advice, when the complete core of his theory, is that achieving that by yourself cannot be done in any way, so that you dont have the possibilities to learn that technique to become a carpenter? All he is talking about, how to convince people to tell him he was a carpenter. What use does it have, to make other people tell that you were a carpenter, if you yourself dont believe in being a carpenter?
Quote:
Confidence is not a cause or an antecedent. It is an effect and a consequent. Confidence is an emotional state in which one has or lacks because of external and outside stimuli and maybe his genetics. Emotions like confidence are electrical impulses and chemical reactions in the brain that are triggered by outside stimuli. One can't choose to feel confident, happy, sad, angry or any other emotions. How the heck is this possible. It is possible to choose your actions though.
Did you read my post? I have written how it is possible? Start analyzing yourself, therapy, ... People dont tell themselves automatically: "Uh, I am worthless. So confidence given by myself is worthless. Proudness in myself is worthless." As already written, yes you cannot choose by magic to become this or that. But as written as well, you can work on analyzing and understanding the reasons, why you are the way you are. And then work on becoming healthy again. If your leg is broken, you definitly cannot start jumping around. But you can work on healing it to be able to jump around again. Changing your personality isnt done by "simply ...", stop thinking about easy nonsense. But it can be done with professional help. While totally giving into it to be worthless, and to give your worth and confidence into the hand of other people, is simply giving up. Giving up is definitely no good advice. How exactly shall an advice, telling you to give up on achieving any self esteem and confidence, and to further let others do that for you, help you to achieve any self esteem and confidence?
Quote:
Even the most intelligent seems to persist in this delusion that one's thoughts create reality? How do most people even derive this? Even a lot of people on here seem to persist in this. Why? No wonder Winston Wu vamoosed out of this country.
Who wrote that were? I did not talk about wish-thinking, I talked about actually working on you, if necessary with professional help, starting to realize and understand the core of your problems to be finally be able to start working against that. Professional therapy and psychology is nothing illusional, but something actually existing. Simply take a telephone book, and there will be plenty of real existing therapeuts be written in it, that will be much more able to help him to realize the problems leading him to lack the ability of any natural proudness in yourself, then an hairdresser.
The article refers all the time, about the problem to get others to give you confident.
Have you even thought, that if the writer of the article managed, to stop depending his worth upon others telling him "That he is such a good doggy.", that the moment he was able to realize that, he would as well no longer feel forced to feel bad, only because noone telling him otherwise? If you dont start depending your worth from other telling you to be a good doogie, then others not telling you what a good doggie you are, doesnt even become a problem.
I interpret what you say differently than you do. To me, what he is saying is confidence is an emotion and all emotions are effects. Your line of thinking is similar to the self-esteem's movements thinking. They saw self-esteem as something that was intrinsic. Self-esteem is an emotional reaction to one's successes and failures. It is not the other way around. One may be able to cultivate their success at something if they're able to cultivate their talents. If one is able to practice math they may become better at it and their confidence will go up. They may need remedial instruction and it may eventually click. If one practices over and over again and is still having major issues his confidence will go down.
Let's say others do not even see a problem and they see him as lazy. His confidence will certainty go down. It is similar with employment. If company after company will not hire him or he keeps getting fired left and right his confidence to being able to obtain and keep a job will go down. If this person has tried to read online and seek others assistance including voc-rehab and they say they can't help him because it is beyond their expertise and knowledge and they recommend him to go to the Autism center which is $100.00 every session and is every other week then what? This person is told to have more confidence and be true to himself all of the time when the assumption is that being true to oneself will enable him to survive in society. To survive in society this one needs acceptance and assistance from others to do so. Not only does one's self-worth has to come from others one's very survival may depend upon assistance from others. Telling a person to develop more self-confidence and be more positive will not cut it. This is the essence of what this guy is saying.
It is up to others if one receives assistance or not. It is up to the employer if one receives the position or not. One can make all of the moves and follow the advice all he likes and be as genuine and fake as he or she wants. In the end, people decide if they will accept you or not and your very survival may depend upon this acceptance and approval. This doesn't even have to be constrained esteem needs. Even Fnord said "Conform or die" It worked for him. He conformed to the party line in the way he was supposed to do it. He was accepted by others in the community and by his employer so therefore he has been successful. His techniques work. He has that approval. In society, one does not live in a vacuum. One's well being depends upon other's acceptance and approval of you. This is truth. Why can't others seem to accept this basic truth? It makes no sense to me.
By the way, even medical professionals can be wrong from time to time. Remember, Homosexuality used to be in the DSM. Now it is gone. The DSM is very subjective. There are no medical tests for any of these disorders like there is for the HIV virus or cancer or Parkinson's. Even NIMH has rejected the DSM and going away from it. Your looking at the criteria for Narcissism in which the diagnosis is given based upon a person's subjective observation and opinion which may be based upon certain biases.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sid ... port-dsm-5
06 Nov 2013, 1:42 pm
If you have a lot of money and you aren't confident, people will target you and take it away, so you must be confident before you have success. Confidence just means you have faith in yourself, even if it means you might be making a mistake. You accept you are human, you aren't infallible. You have to continue even though you could be completely wrong. Confident people have faith in their abilities, number one. Confidence does help if you have a job especially. If people see you are constantly questioning yourself, they will lose faith in you, try to push you around, try to get others to believe you are incompetent and unworthy. This would not help you.
You are better off if you have confidence when you are trying to survive day to day.
06 Nov 2013, 2:22 pm
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
If you have a lot of money and you aren't confident, people will target you and take it away, so you must be confident before you have success. Confidence just means you have faith in yourself, even if it means you might be making a mistake. You accept you are human, you aren't infallible. You have to continue even though you could be completely wrong. Confident people have faith in their abilities, number one. Confidence does help if you have a job especially. If people see you are constantly questioning yourself, they will lose faith in you, try to push you around, try to get others to believe you are incompetent and unworthy. This would not help you.
You are better off if you have confidence when you are trying to survive day to day.
You are better off if you have confidence when you are trying to survive day to day.
*Sighs very heavily from frustration and futility*
I will try this again. All you're doing is parroting the same stuff I hear everyday in American culture. You're repeating it verbatim without any critical thought to it. You're focusing on the consequent instead of the antecedent. I don't even know how you and others see it this way. If one doesn't have the knowledge and skills how can one have confidence in his ability to do something especially if one doesn't even know what to do to learn the knowledge and skills? I had to go to driving school and I learned lessons that gave me better ability to drive. I was able to incorporate this knowledge which enhanced my abilities ergo giving me more confidence.
Confidence does not cause one to succeed. It is a emotional byproduct of one's success and success is a byproduct of one's knowledge, aptitude and wisdom in different areas. How the hell did you derive this assertion that one should keep on going even if one is wrong? Let's look at the story of Moby Dick and the main character Captain Ahab. You're saying Captain Ahab was right to continue on his foolhardy quest. Why would one continue on something if he is completely wrong? Even Einstein said and I am paraphrasing said "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the hallmark of insanity. Winston Wu on that website is right. http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Attitude_Fanatics.htm
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You are better off if you have confidence when you are trying to survive day to day.
We don't need more confidence or positivity. What we truthfully need as a society is critical thinking.
You're ideas make absolutely no sense to me and go against basic common sense.
Quote:
If people see you are constantly questioning yourself, they will lose faith in you, try to push you around, try to get others to believe you are incompetent and unworthy.
So, you're telling me I have control over other people's minds? How is it that my lack of confidence causes other people's reactions? Are you saying we do not have free will to control our reactions to others? Even responsibility advocates claim we have free will and we can control ourselves? Can we control our reactions yes or no?
06 Nov 2013, 3:26 pm
author
Quote:
So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
Janissy
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He's wrong about this. The most supremely confident people are actually internally confident. They aren't reacting to other peoples' opinions about them. That is what is magnetically attractive about true confience- that it can't be shaken by the negative opinions of others. People whose confidence is on much shakier ground will have it rise or fall in accordance with the opinions of others. That is weak confidence because it is externally controlled. That the author thinks this weak confidence is all there is just shows he has a massive blind spot.
cubedemon
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I do not follow what you are saying and here is why. One's thoughts, ideas, and experiences are both shaped by your environment and genetics. One's emotions and emotional state is a reaction to an outside stimulus. For example, if a deer hears a lion roar the deer may feel fear and run. Did the deer's fear cause the lion to roar? It's akin to saying that the birth of the baby caused the mother's pregnancy. I don't get this whole confidence bit at all.
Emotions are a combination of reaction to the enviroment and one's internal neurology and neurotransmitter milieu. This is how two people can have different emotional reactions to the same external stimulus. It's the difference between optimists and pessimists. Beyond that, the author has an overly narrow focus on what constitutes the external enviorment. He acts as though the opinions of authors are the only thing that counts.
author
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You can not just decide to be confident. Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Janissy
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Only shaky, flimsy confidence requires support from others. That isn't true confidence. He's right that you can't just snap your fingers and have confidence appear. It takes longer. That's why the aphorism "fake it till you make it" exists. There is lag time between trying to be confident and actually being confident. But it doesn't require the approval of others. The most confident people are the ones who do what they do in spite of ubiquitous criticism.
cubedemon
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Again, I don't understand. How is it possible to fake the belief that one can do something when he can't?
Just because you can't do something right this minute doesn't mean you will never be abl;e to do it no matter how much you practice. The aphorism "fake it till you make it" is really just an encouragement to practice.
author
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Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence. Confidence without success is delusional
Janissy
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.....it can be, if it is following a path that will inevitably lead to failure. But it isn't always delusional. Sometimes it's just forward thinking.
cubedemon
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Will you please explain further?
Being confident that an action will succeed is delusional if that action will inevitably lead to failure. For example, it is delusional to think that you can fly when you jump off a cliff. However, past failure is not an inevitable predictor of future failure if you tweak your approach. When you tweak your approach, you are doing something you haven't tried so you have no past history of success. However it isn't delusional to be confident that your tweak will lead to success even if it is untried. Somebody had to be the first person to survive jumping off a cliff because they tried a new approach of mimicking birdwings- a hang glider. That is what I meant by forward thinking. Inventors never think like the author. Never. If they did they'd never invent anything because an invention by definition has no history of success to build on. It is novel. An inventor must have the confidence to try something new.
Janissy
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and/or dishonest, thus fake, and others will quickly recognize it as such. he is completely wrong about this.
cubedemon
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How is he wrong?
He said that confidence without success was dishonest, thus fake. He was wrong because his premise is wrong. Just because he can't be confident without past success doesn't mean nobody else can either. There is nothing dishonest about having different reactions to the world than him.
Janissy
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Here’s why: It’s not really the confidence itself that people are attracted to. Confidence is merely what results when someone has the qualities that are really attracting us. Obviously, if someone is good-looking, or wealthy, or funny & quick-witted, others will be attracted to them. This, in turn, will give them confidence. If somebody is all those things, people will be attracted to them. But oddly enough, it isn't that attraction that gives people confidence. Some have confidence and those things. Some lack confidence and have those things. Some don't have those things and still have confidence.
[b]cubedemon
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Where does confidence come from?
It comes from the internal conviction that a certain path will be succesful, if not immediately than at some future point.
cubedemon
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What does everyone think of this? I for one mostly agree. If confidence is such a key factor than why did I succeed in jump-starting my wife's vehicle despite the fact that I did not believe I could do it, thinking I would blow out her engine, and kept giving myself negative vibes? Why was the outcome independent of the belief in my ability and my thoughts?
Janissy
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You could jump start her car despite your lack of confidence because the outcome was not dependent on your confidence. That is key.
cubedemon
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Yes, I was able to overrule those thoughts and chose to do so because I used the logic of negation. I had doubts about my doubts and I could've had fallacious reasoning so I decided to take a chance and I succeeded. I used Logic to overcome my lack of confidence. I had negative thinking. I used a form of rational negative thinking to block the thoughts. How do the claims of negative thinking hold up at all?
Positive and Negative thinking comes from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction
Do they have any empirical proof for their claims?
Let's say scientific and laboratory tests were performed and the claims were true. I have a situation in which I put out all kinds of negative energy and I received positive results.
Positive and Negative thinking comes from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction
Do they have any empirical proof for their claims?
Let's say scientific and laboratory tests were performed and the claims were true. I have a situation in which I put out all kinds of negative energy and I received positive results.
You had a negative thought that you decided to negate. That double negative is actually a positive, or at least neutral. When you negate a negative thought you can't really say that you had an excess of negative thinking. You didn't actually put out all kinds of negative energy, by the account you gave. Instead you chose to override a negative thought. Semantically you call that negating the negative thought but since it actually overrode it, it became a neutral if not positive state of mind.
Janissy
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I think this guy is all kinds of wrong. He doesn't actually understand what confidence is and doesn't realize that confidence in the face of failure is not fake or dishonest even if it may be delusional.
cubedemon
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I will accept the possibility that I am operating under faulty reasoning. If I have faulty premises and assumptions and so does he what are they?
The faulty premise that you both share is the belief that past failure is an accurate predictor of future failure.
cubedemon
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I had major problems trying to find a job in IT. This describes my thoughts and reasoning. http://whyifailedinamerica.wordpress.co ... mployment/
Be warned it is very long.
Telling me I need to get confidence and change my attitude tells me nothing, tells the author of this post nothing and tells Winston wu the creator of the website the post is on nothing. If you go through all of the author's post he speaks about his music being torn to shreds despite all of the confidence he had that he was excellent. Winston Wu could not get a date in America whatsoever. I don't know what his employment life was like but it would not surprise if he was floundering as well. He left America because of all this and he seems very happy. He seems like he is successful and found a solution abroad.
This begs the question for me. Would I be able to have more success somewhere else as well?
Part of the scientific method is the idea of falsifiability. If someone states the assertion that one's attitude and lack of confidence is causing my, his problems and Winston Wu's problems then how is falsifiability able to be applied here if by the act of falsifying is considered negative thinking. People have said this on various websites concerning confidence and positivity. Even Fnord seems to accept this whole confidence, lack of confidence, positivity and negativity as truth and promotes it as gospel truth without performing the scientific method on it and using rationality. It makes no logical sense to me and boggles my mind. It makes no sense and to me Fnord and lots of people in America seem to have these contradictory beliefs. If my reasoning is faulty then how is it faulty?
Be warned it is very long.
Telling me I need to get confidence and change my attitude tells me nothing, tells the author of this post nothing and tells Winston wu the creator of the website the post is on nothing. If you go through all of the author's post he speaks about his music being torn to shreds despite all of the confidence he had that he was excellent. Winston Wu could not get a date in America whatsoever. I don't know what his employment life was like but it would not surprise if he was floundering as well. He left America because of all this and he seems very happy. He seems like he is successful and found a solution abroad.
This begs the question for me. Would I be able to have more success somewhere else as well?
Part of the scientific method is the idea of falsifiability. If someone states the assertion that one's attitude and lack of confidence is causing my, his problems and Winston Wu's problems then how is falsifiability able to be applied here if by the act of falsifying is considered negative thinking. People have said this on various websites concerning confidence and positivity. Even Fnord seems to accept this whole confidence, lack of confidence, positivity and negativity as truth and promotes it as gospel truth without performing the scientific method on it and using rationality. It makes no logical sense to me and boggles my mind. It makes no sense and to me Fnord and lots of people in America seem to have these contradictory beliefs. If my reasoning is faulty then how is it faulty?
The faulty reasoning is in thinking that if someone states that lack of confidence is causing problems that they are saying that lack of confidence is the only cause of problems. It isn't the only cause. It is one of multiple causes.
06 Nov 2013, 3:36 pm
Generally I agree with you, cube, that thinking you can do something doesn't mean you can do it, but there are some notable exceptions.
Quote:
Confidence does not cause one to succeed. It is a emotional byproduct of one's success and success is a byproduct of one's knowledge, aptitude and wisdom in different areas.
What about people who have misplaced confidence? Or a misplaced lack of confidence?
The obvious example is in a nightclub. In these situations, a lot of my friends are less confident about dancing in front of strangers etc. than I am. I'm not a great dancer, I just do not have as many reservations at they do. Most of my friends go to nightclubs to have fun and meet new people to be amorous with. In order to have a good time or meet new people, they have to consume alcohol, which removes their inhibitions, but also somewhat removes their ability to be amorous.
When you have a misplaced lack of confidence, then having confidence can allow you to actually do things. The only thing stopping you is your lack of confidence. If my friends (who are just as nice, friendly, etc.) as me just had confidence to talk to people when sober, then they'd probably "outperform" me because they aren't autistic and are more motivated (I go out to dance, they go out to be amorous). Because of their misplaced lack of confidences, they just end up speaking in slurred speech and throwing up over their bedroom floor.
06 Nov 2013, 4:12 pm
Janissy wrote:
author
Janissy
cubedemon
Emotions are a combination of reaction to the enviroment and one's internal neurology and neurotransmitter milieu. This is how two people can have different emotional reactions to the same external stimulus. It's the difference between optimists and pessimists. Beyond that, the author has an overly narrow focus on what constitutes the external enviorment. He acts as though the opinions of authors are the only thing that counts.
author
Janissy
cubedemon
Just because you can't do something right this minute doesn't mean you will never be abl;e to do it no matter how much you practice. The aphorism "fake it till you make it" is really just an encouragement to practice.
author
Janissy
cubedemon
Being confident that an action will succeed is delusional if that action will inevitably lead to failure. For example, it is delusional to think that you can fly when you jump off a cliff. However, past failure is not an inevitable predictor of future failure if you tweak your approach. When you tweak your approach, you are doing something you haven't tried so you have no past history of success. However it isn't delusional to be confident that your tweak will lead to success even if it is untried. Somebody had to be the first person to survive jumping off a cliff because they tried a new approach of mimicking birdwings- a hang glider. That is what I meant by forward thinking. Inventors never think like the author. Never. If they did they'd never invent anything because an invention by definition has no history of success to build on. It is novel. An inventor must have the confidence to try something new.
Janissy
cubedemon
He said that confidence without success was dishonest, thus fake. He was wrong because his premise is wrong. Just because he can't be confident without past success doesn't mean nobody else can either. There is nothing dishonest about having different reactions to the world than him.
Janissy
[b]cubedemon
It comes from the internal conviction that a certain path will be succesful, if not immediately than at some future point.
cubedemon
Janissy
cubedemon
You had a negative thought that you decided to negate. That double negative is actually a positive, or at least neutral. When you negate a negative thought you can't really say that you had an excess of negative thinking. You didn't actually put out all kinds of negative energy, by the account you gave. Instead you chose to override a negative thought. Semantically you call that negating the negative thought but since it actually overrode it, it became a neutral if not positive state of mind.
Janissy
cubedemon
The faulty premise that you both share is the belief that past failure is an accurate predictor of future failure.
cubedemon
The faulty reasoning is in thinking that if someone states that lack of confidence is causing problems that they are saying that lack of confidence is the only cause of problems. It isn't the only cause. It is one of multiple causes.
Quote:
So here’s the truth about confidence: You can only have confidence when other people give it to you.
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
When others in your age group like you, respect you, admire you, and are attracted to you, you get confidence. When they don’t like you, scorn you, and reject you, you lose confidence. Therefore, the level of confidence you have is controlled by others, NOT by you
Janissy
Quote:
He's wrong about this. The most supremely confident people are actually internally confident. They aren't reacting to other peoples' opinions about them. That is what is magnetically attractive about true confience- that it can't be shaken by the negative opinions of others. People whose confidence is on much shakier ground will have it rise or fall in accordance with the opinions of others. That is weak confidence because it is externally controlled. That the author thinks this weak confidence is all there is just shows he has a massive blind spot.
cubedemon
Quote:
I do not follow what you are saying and here is why. One's thoughts, ideas, and experiences are both shaped by your environment and genetics. One's emotions and emotional state is a reaction to an outside stimulus. For example, if a deer hears a lion roar the deer may feel fear and run. Did the deer's fear cause the lion to roar? It's akin to saying that the birth of the baby caused the mother's pregnancy. I don't get this whole confidence bit at all.
Emotions are a combination of reaction to the enviroment and one's internal neurology and neurotransmitter milieu. This is how two people can have different emotional reactions to the same external stimulus. It's the difference between optimists and pessimists. Beyond that, the author has an overly narrow focus on what constitutes the external enviorment. He acts as though the opinions of authors are the only thing that counts.
author
Quote:
You can not just decide to be confident. Confidence is not a choice or decision you can make. You can’t just snap your fingers and, Abracadabra, you’re confident. It doesn’t work that way. It can’t work that way. Social confidence, by it’s very definition, requires support and acceptance from others before it can exist.
Janissy
Quote:
Only shaky, flimsy confidence requires support from others. That isn't true confidence. He's right that you can't just snap your fingers and have confidence appear. It takes longer. That's why the aphorism "fake it till you make it" exists. There is lag time between trying to be confident and actually being confident. But it doesn't require the approval of others. The most confident people are the ones who do what they do in spite of ubiquitous criticism.
cubedemon
Quote:
Again, I don't understand. How is it possible to fake the belief that one can do something when he can't?
Just because you can't do something right this minute doesn't mean you will never be abl;e to do it no matter how much you practice. The aphorism "fake it till you make it" is really just an encouragement to practice.
author
Quote:
Confidence is merely a byproduct of success. You need some kind of social/sexual/romantic success before you can have genuine confidence. Confidence without success is delusional
Janissy
Quote:
.....it can be, if it is following a path that will inevitably lead to failure. But it isn't always delusional. Sometimes it's just forward thinking.
cubedemon
Quote:
Will you please explain further?
Being confident that an action will succeed is delusional if that action will inevitably lead to failure. For example, it is delusional to think that you can fly when you jump off a cliff. However, past failure is not an inevitable predictor of future failure if you tweak your approach. When you tweak your approach, you are doing something you haven't tried so you have no past history of success. However it isn't delusional to be confident that your tweak will lead to success even if it is untried. Somebody had to be the first person to survive jumping off a cliff because they tried a new approach of mimicking birdwings- a hang glider. That is what I meant by forward thinking. Inventors never think like the author. Never. If they did they'd never invent anything because an invention by definition has no history of success to build on. It is novel. An inventor must have the confidence to try something new.
Janissy
Quote:
and/or dishonest, thus fake, and others will quickly recognize it as such. he is completely wrong about this.
cubedemon
Quote:
How is he wrong?
He said that confidence without success was dishonest, thus fake. He was wrong because his premise is wrong. Just because he can't be confident without past success doesn't mean nobody else can either. There is nothing dishonest about having different reactions to the world than him.
Janissy
Quote:
Here’s why: It’s not really the confidence itself that people are attracted to. Confidence is merely what results when someone has the qualities that are really attracting us. Obviously, if someone is good-looking, or wealthy, or funny & quick-witted, others will be attracted to them. This, in turn, will give them confidence. If somebody is all those things, people will be attracted to them. But oddly enough, it isn't that attraction that gives people confidence. Some have confidence and those things. Some lack confidence and have those things. Some don't have those things and still have confidence.
[b]cubedemon
Quote:
Where does confidence come from?
It comes from the internal conviction that a certain path will be succesful, if not immediately than at some future point.
cubedemon
Quote:
What does everyone think of this? I for one mostly agree. If confidence is such a key factor than why did I succeed in jump-starting my wife's vehicle despite the fact that I did not believe I could do it, thinking I would blow out her engine, and kept giving myself negative vibes? Why was the outcome independent of the belief in my ability and my thoughts?
Janissy
Quote:
You could jump start her car despite your lack of confidence because the outcome was not dependent on your confidence. That is key.
cubedemon
Quote:
Yes, I was able to overrule those thoughts and chose to do so because I used the logic of negation. I had doubts about my doubts and I could've had fallacious reasoning so I decided to take a chance and I succeeded. I used Logic to overcome my lack of confidence. I had negative thinking. I used a form of rational negative thinking to block the thoughts. How do the claims of negative thinking hold up at all?
Positive and Negative thinking comes from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction
Do they have any empirical proof for their claims?
Let's say scientific and laboratory tests were performed and the claims were true. I have a situation in which I put out all kinds of negative energy and I received positive results.
Positive and Negative thinking comes from this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(book)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction
Do they have any empirical proof for their claims?
Let's say scientific and laboratory tests were performed and the claims were true. I have a situation in which I put out all kinds of negative energy and I received positive results.
You had a negative thought that you decided to negate. That double negative is actually a positive, or at least neutral. When you negate a negative thought you can't really say that you had an excess of negative thinking. You didn't actually put out all kinds of negative energy, by the account you gave. Instead you chose to override a negative thought. Semantically you call that negating the negative thought but since it actually overrode it, it became a neutral if not positive state of mind.
Janissy
Quote:
I think this guy is all kinds of wrong. He doesn't actually understand what confidence is and doesn't realize that confidence in the face of failure is not fake or dishonest even if it may be delusional.
cubedemon
Quote:
I will accept the possibility that I am operating under faulty reasoning. If I have faulty premises and assumptions and so does he what are they?
The faulty premise that you both share is the belief that past failure is an accurate predictor of future failure.
cubedemon
Quote:
I had major problems trying to find a job in IT. This describes my thoughts and reasoning. http://whyifailedinamerica.wordpress.co ... mployment/
Be warned it is very long.
Telling me I need to get confidence and change my attitude tells me nothing, tells the author of this post nothing and tells Winston wu the creator of the website the post is on nothing. If you go through all of the author's post he speaks about his music being torn to shreds despite all of the confidence he had that he was excellent. Winston Wu could not get a date in America whatsoever. I don't know what his employment life was like but it would not surprise if he was floundering as well. He left America because of all this and he seems very happy. He seems like he is successful and found a solution abroad.
This begs the question for me. Would I be able to have more success somewhere else as well?
Part of the scientific method is the idea of falsifiability. If someone states the assertion that one's attitude and lack of confidence is causing my, his problems and Winston Wu's problems then how is falsifiability able to be applied here if by the act of falsifying is considered negative thinking. People have said this on various websites concerning confidence and positivity. Even Fnord seems to accept this whole confidence, lack of confidence, positivity and negativity as truth and promotes it as gospel truth without performing the scientific method on it and using rationality. It makes no logical sense to me and boggles my mind. It makes no sense and to me Fnord and lots of people in America seem to have these contradictory beliefs. If my reasoning is faulty then how is it faulty?
Be warned it is very long.
Telling me I need to get confidence and change my attitude tells me nothing, tells the author of this post nothing and tells Winston wu the creator of the website the post is on nothing. If you go through all of the author's post he speaks about his music being torn to shreds despite all of the confidence he had that he was excellent. Winston Wu could not get a date in America whatsoever. I don't know what his employment life was like but it would not surprise if he was floundering as well. He left America because of all this and he seems very happy. He seems like he is successful and found a solution abroad.
This begs the question for me. Would I be able to have more success somewhere else as well?
Part of the scientific method is the idea of falsifiability. If someone states the assertion that one's attitude and lack of confidence is causing my, his problems and Winston Wu's problems then how is falsifiability able to be applied here if by the act of falsifying is considered negative thinking. People have said this on various websites concerning confidence and positivity. Even Fnord seems to accept this whole confidence, lack of confidence, positivity and negativity as truth and promotes it as gospel truth without performing the scientific method on it and using rationality. It makes no logical sense to me and boggles my mind. It makes no sense and to me Fnord and lots of people in America seem to have these contradictory beliefs. If my reasoning is faulty then how is it faulty?
The faulty reasoning is in thinking that if someone states that lack of confidence is causing problems that they are saying that lack of confidence is the only cause of problems. It isn't the only cause. It is one of multiple causes.
Ah! As Sherlock Holmes said, the game is afoot. I think I see an over-arching theme here. The issue here is semantics and pragmatics. Fake it until you make it really means practice until you make it. I would never have known this until you told me. Why don't people say the word practice instead of fake?
Another thing is I did not know that when people say things like x is your problem they may be implying that b,c, and d are my problems as well. This makes me wonder this. What if this author and Winston Wu are on the spectrum and it is no wonder they had issues in America. What is happening is we are agreeing on the underlying points but we're all debating semantics and pragmatics. I think what is happening is they're having problems with the pragmatics and semantics just like I am.
You're right about forward thinking as well. If you look at Buddhism it has a lot of similarities to Christianity. Westerners have problems with the semantics and pragmatics. I think this is where we're having issues as well. I believe the first step to having a rational discussion is agreeing on the semantics and pragmatics to our communication. Once we can agree upon meanings maybe a lot of the arugments that seem to go nowhere will be significantly reduced.
06 Nov 2013, 4:34 pm
cubedemon6073 wrote:
By the way, even medical professionals can be wrong from time to time. Remember, Homosexuality used to be in the DSM. Now it is gone. The DSM is very subjective. There are no medical tests for any of these disorders like there is for the HIV virus or cancer or Parkinson's. Even NIMH has rejected the DSM and going away from it. Your looking at the criteria for Narcissism in which the diagnosis is given based upon a person's subjective observation and opinion which may be based upon certain biases.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sid ... port-dsm-5
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sid ... port-dsm-5
They were never wrong about homosexuality as homosexuality is real. They just changed their minds about it being a mental illness.
Just the same, NPD is real. Whether or not it should be considered a mental illness is a different matter. As someone whose father clearly fits enough criteria for NPD (and regularly and consistently fits them), I can't agree at all that it isn't real. And let's just say that it isn't very pleasing to be in his company.
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