BEING AWESOME

Just little a pointer to begin with: Being a guy I will mostly write about confidence in that context, and given that premise, pick-up and attracting women is a natural topic that arises, one that is important to every guy. Therefore, my examples will often revolve around that but are by no means exclusive to those kinds of settings or situations. With that said, on with Show.

We have all seen it: A pretty ugly or average looking guy hanging out with a smoking hot woman and then thought to ourselves, "What the hell is SHE doing with HIM!", and, "why the hell can't I get a girl like that if HE can?!". Now this also applies to not so attractive women being with more attractive men to some extent but it's more common the other way around. Simply because women don't value looks as much as men do, rather they value confidence. Which is exactly what my point is. Men who are confident in themselves without having to seek approval from others or from external things are more attractive to women (and to everyone, quite frankly). This is also one of the reasons that "bad asses" seem to get all the women, and not the "nice guys" – the (perceived) bad asses radiate confidence, the nice guys don't. Although, the guys that are ass holes and treat women like shit more often than not only get the women that don't have a lot of confidence. And if you ask me, these kinds of guys mostly get their confidence from treating women in a poor way. They use the women not to share life and love but to elevate their own egos and thus boost their confidence. However, that is not real confidence since confidence can only come from the inside. So, what is confidence? Well, let's start by saying what it isn't:

• Confidence is not treating other people bad to make yourself seem better.
• Confidence is not manifested by walking around trying to act in such a way. That is, trying to look like a silver back gorilla unless you indeed really feel like one.
• Confidence is not had by driving a sports car or wearing a $10 000 watch (not that those things aren't nice).
• Confidence is not had by getting approval from others.

Now don't get me wrong, what I have mentioned above can make you feel confident – for a while. But these are all confidence manifested in external things or through other people, which instantly goes away when they or the things are not present any more. Therefore, real confidence is what you have when you really accept and enjoy who you are, regardless of all the material stuff and other things (or people). Being confident is manifested by knowing and feeling that no matter what happens to you, you will always have yourself, and that's a great thing. It doesn't matter if you get rejected when approaching women at the bar, because you don't take it as a personal insult, you just move on. And by the way, the more confident you are, the less rejected you get. However, I'm not saying that a confident person never feels bad about him or herself, of course they do and of course rejection makes them feel bad. But they do not define themselves through their mistakes or rejections and at the end of the day, they know what they have and are proud of it. In other words, your mother is right: "Always be yourself!".

But what if you consider yourself a shy and unsocial person? Being yourself in that case will surely not help you meet women or help you out in life generally, right? Well, being shy and unsocial are never real personal traits, no one is shy and unsocial as a person. That is just how we act when we feel insecure or when we are in an uncomfortable situation, and conveniently, insecurity is the exact opposite of confidence. What that means is that when you are not OK with being yourself, you try to hide by being shy or you avoid interacting with people by being unsocial. Simply because you don't think that you're good enough to be around someone else or that you don't deserve it. Once again, I'm not saying that confident people don't feel insecure from time to time, we all do. But as I stated above, they don't define themselves by their insecurities. So think about it, do you see yourself as shy, unsocial or awkward? If so, then think again and realize that you are not those things. They are only manifestations of your insecurities.

In a larger context, feeling insecure is a result of moving outside ones comfort zone. Outside it, we don't have the control that we usually do and we don't know what to expect, so naturally we feel insecure and try to limit our exposure to unknown things that might potentially hurt us. It's a defense mechanism and it's perfectly normal. Back in the days when we went out to hunt game (not talking about women here ;-) ) and slay mammoths to feed our families – to use a cliché – it was a good thing to be cautious and careful whenever we roamed outside our caves. But today, there are no saber tooth tigers to watch out for so when we step outside our homes and in to the bars/nightclubs we have nothing to be afraid of, there are no life threatening dangers. It is perfectly normal to feel insecure or unsettled, we all do outside our comfort zones, but honestly, who gives a shit about whether you get rejected by the girl at the bar? You? REALLY? What does it matter and who will even remember? I'm pretty sure that the fear of rejection is bigger than the actual feeling of being rejected itself, in fact I know it to be so from my experience.

Now we that we know confidence is about being ourselves and enjoying it, even if we sometimes feel a bit insecure, how do we go about becoming confident?

First of all, it doesn't happen over a day, you don't just wake up one morning and feel like the most confident man in the world. It's a process like everything else in life, it takes time and effort. Secondly, confidence and confidence improvement is a vast area, so it's possible to write books on the subject and indeed many people have. However, I will try to give an answer as best I know how and as concisely as possible. The key is to continuously challenge yourself and step outside your comfort zone, that is how we grow as human beings and that is how you will get more confident. There is not one single thing in life that you have achieved without going through some kind of discomfort. That's just how it works and therefore the same procedure applies to becoming the confident man (or woman for that matter) that you deserve to be. In other words, each time you take a step outside your comfort zone you broaden it by a little, effectively making the area in which you feel confident bigger by that much. This means that you will boost your confidence little by little each time you challenge yourself and your comfort zone will grow accordingly.

Final summation: Being confident is all about being yourself, your real self, and accepting as well as enjoying it. Real confidence is not achieved by relying on external factors to provide it. To become more confident you must challenge yourself continuously and step outside your comfort zone.

Please get back to me with your questions or thoughts! And remember:

"A coward dies a thousand times, a hero only dies once."

- Philip