One that I'm particularly a fan of is what I call 'Confidence Through Understanding'. The more certain you are of something, the more confidently you can state it. Calling a red apple red is something few people would have trouble with. So, by learning a lot about something, the more certain you are of what you know, and the easier and more confidently you can talk about it. It can be anything from academic subjects to historical events to modern day issues, events and people. And if it's something that other people often like discussing, might find helpful, interesting or impressive, then even better.
This can also be applied more indirectly, by developing your skills and contrasting them against other peoples'. Like if you practiced throwing things into a bin from a distance, you'd be a lot less apprehensive of tossing garbage into a garbage bin from a distance, in public, and potentially missing and embarrassing yourself if you knew you could do it 9 times out of 10.
In the past, I worked on this by learning more about the type of social interactions that people enjoy, like various ways of being entertaining, and improving my skills or establishing new habits.
Another is 'Secure In Familiarity'. No one is more confident than when they're around people they know well and have been around for years and years, and you can't get that way without spending time around and interacting with someone. This works for more than just people, too. Places, and even social dynamics are subject to this as well. 'Exposure Therapy' is another name for it. I just don't like that name. Anyway, there's a lot of tricks to build up your sense of familiarity with things without having to take the full dive.
I have a lot of social anxiety as well as an active case of selective mutism, and I've been pretty socially isolated for years to boot, so to work back the mutism and get myself used to social interactions again I'll watch videos or live-streams of people interacting with other, then try my hand at little innocuous comments or emotes in live-stream chats, youtube comments, then start talking on forums or big discord servers where I can hide behind the anonymity of the masses, and yadda yadda till I'm having short casual conversations with neighbours when I walk my dog or get groceries.
Another good one is "Confidence Through Success". Repeatedly succeeding at something will obviously give you the confidence to succeed at it again. This can be taken advantage of in many ways. You can break up big and difficult goals into many, more accomplishable smaller goals you know you can handle, and ride the wave of small successes till you reach the end. You can also acknowledge part or even pseudo-successes. My approach to tackling my social anxiety and mutism is by way of both pseudo-success and breaking big goals into small parts in addition the building up of familiarity. Watching a video of people talking obviously isn't directly part of the act of meeting and befriending new people, but it's something that I might not ordinarily do, so I consider the act of going out of my way to do so a nice little pseudo-success.
A necessary 'trick' for just about everybody is 'Nobody Is Perfect'. Everyone has flaws, and most people hide theirs as much as they can. The vast majority of people try to present the best possible image of themselves to others. And then there's the predominant method of "Fake It Till You Make It" present within most businesses all over the world. Everyone is flawed, and that's okay.
Another one along the same lines is "Don't compete with others. Compete with yourself". Comparing yourself to others is a recipe for disaster. Remember the saying that "There's always a bigger mountain". Of the billions of people in the world, how many can unarguably be considered the best at something? There will always be someone better than you, nevermind all the natural bias that just make our perceptions even worse. So rather establishing your self worth in a system stacked against you, work with something that you can actually work with. Namely, yourself. You know how you are, you know who you were yesterday, and you'll know how you'll be tomorrow. Unless you're working with some kind of degenerative illness, you know that you can surpass who you were yesterday. It's accomplishable, and the accomplishment is a valid source of pride and confidence. It's also a great source of mental wellbeing, and you can power it with even small, and what might seem like insignificant accomplishments to others. So long as it's meaningful to you it's all good. That kind of stuff pulled me through an eating disorder that had me looking like a skeletal ghoul and now that I've gotten to the point where I even have a bit of a fat belly, not only does it make me feel happy, I'm even proud to show it off.
There are a lot of ways to build up confidence and self-esteem. There's no possible way for me to talk about every mean I know of. Sadly, this stuff is rarely compiled and presented for consumption by others. I learned by way of trial and error, and by stumbling into pick-up artist communities in my 20's. There's obviously a lot of bad stuff and people there, but neither are the people or the info all bad. A lot of people who are a part of it are just lost boys with no guidance or nature 'gifts' in favor, trying to find their way into adulthood. Sometimes girls even pop in, and not just as tourists.
I also drew a lot of inspiration from acting, comedy and improv, after all, people in those fields are ostensibly among the best of entertainers around.
30 Sep 2021, 2:27 am
