It’s also easier to be confident if you have something to be confident about. Ace your classes, make a ton of money (this is an especially good one), create some awesome art or music, teach yourself a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, throw an great fastball, whatever happens to coincide with your interests. Have something specific to feel good about yourself for.
100% spot on.
Now addressing the elephant in the room I would suggest counseling of some kind. Whether its mindfullness, CBT etc it doesn’t really matter too much. You need to address the fundamental issue of self worth, once you have accepted that you are a decent chap then other people will. This is the core of your issues as far as I can tell, but I am not a trained person just a bloke who has had his fair share of life and brought up two kids to adulthood.
At the very least join a club or a team.
My best advice is just be cool and stop caring so much. Everyone (and I mean everyone) has their anxieties, but think to yourself “what’s the worst thing that could likely happen?”
Don’t overly-invest yourself in expectations of what you want to happen because things usually will usually not turn out like you expect. For example, if you’re going out with a girl you’ve had a crush on for a long time, that’s great. But don’t be planning to go to college together and get married and have kids. Take it one date at a time, be a nice person, and see what happens. You can’t make her like you and she can’t make you like her. You either enjoy each others company or not.
The only piece of advice I want to give you is to remember that 10 years from now, 99% of the stuff you think is so very important (the friends, the hangouts, the activities and those girls)… will mean nothing to you.
YOU will be a very different person… and for the better if you work at it and want it.
If you remember that and not take it so seriously, you might find it helps your confidence in the here and now.
Which is why I recommend that you just throw yourself into the mix and start asking girls out. Ten years from now you are going to realize that a lot of those cool people with friends were just normal and nothing special; no better than you. And a lot of those girls wanted you to ask them out but they were too shy and didn’t have a circle of real friends either. Some of those over achievers with large circles of friends are being forced into to doing by their parents and will burn out, get fat, become drunkards or bums; some of them succeed and become rich; but so what? There is plenty of success to go around; don’t fixate on any one thing right off the bat, play the field. You’ll see, it’s just life. It’s not rocket surgery!