Double posting to ask -
Do you remember your successes or your failures better? And which more fondly?
My favorite memories are the glorious failures. The time we made a Sponge Bob costume for son number three by glueing yellow Cello sponges to a cardboard box … and then it rained. We left a trail of sponges behind us. No success makes me smile in recollection as much as that failure memory does!
Confidence is only helpful in some situations. Plenty of blowhards have, or convincingly fake, a surfeit of confidence in certain situations. People confident in one setting may not be confident in every setting.
Gaining skills is better, and often leads to genuine confidence in those areas, but not necessarily in others. Gaining skills involves some degree and acceptance of failure and the mindset one can and will improve. Success can cause too much confidence, which is not always helpful, especially in areas far removed from the skill set which fuelled it, though some people are genuine dilettantes.
Success does increase confidence and is often a matter of luck, skill, timing, perspicacity and perseverance. Confidence increases the chances of success when some of the other elements are there. People are often tolerant of limited humblebragging. They tend to dislike narcissists. But what they dislike most are phonies. Having the “confidence” to spout untruths or half-truths is not necessarily very adaptive.
But in smaller quantities, sometimes the cart comes before the horse and sometimes not. Is “a positive mindset” or “belief you can overcome difficulties through diligence” a form of confidence? Yes.
A lot of people quote that Malcom Gladwell number (10,000 hours) without taking time to think what that really means (and most of them never actually read the rest of his book “Outliers”).
And people do have certain inane talents or aptitudes that will make it more or less likely they will continue grinding through those 10,000 hours. Or how circumstances (like birth date in the case of Canadian hockey players) will cause some people to be identified as talented before others, putting them on the 10,000 hours path sooner.
Also lets not forget no one wants to spend 10,000 hours doing something they don’t enjoy.
With dating it’s not so much confidence that is attractive as it is fearlessness.
Being afraid of women (or men) is desperately unattractive.
It’s like Mike Dimone from Fast Times told us
I basically agree with the OP.
While confidence is important, it is more something you build with work and experience. An emphasis on being confident first I think is the wrong way of looking at things.
I’m fine with “fake it til you make it”, but pretend confidence is often cringey.
I would consider this separate to advice like “Don’t start a presentation by telling the audience you aren’t very good at presentations”. Not mentioning that you’re nervous, is not the same thing as faking confidence.
Most of my talents are inane.
Clearly spell-check isn’t one of mine.
I think people are conflating “being perceived as capable and confident” and “actually being confident”.
That desire to be perceived as confident is IMHO a product of a consumerist modern society, in particular social media, which causes people to seek out acceptance and superficial popularity. It’s driven by a desire to be “liked” and causes people to focus on their “branding” in an attempt to appear as someone who is likable.
Actually BEING confident comes from having clear purpose and goals and standards with which you hold yourself and others accountable. You do things because they are what you want to do (or they put your closer to your goal of doing what you want to do).
Dating always seem to come up in these discussions. People (men usually) always want to know how to “act confident”. Well how confident can you be if you have to put on a “cool guy suit” that could slip off when you least expect it. Real confident men strive to be someone who women would want to date. They dress well (or put together at least). They pursue careers. They don’t act like douchebags. If a woman doesn’t like who they are, that’s her problem. They want the sort of woman who wants to date the sort of guy they are.
I was going to mention dating but I wasn’t sure if it would be considered a hijack.
I bought into the whole “be confident, women like confidence” thing for years, and probably came across as an absolute douche (I was never rude, but would have just come across as fake and “tryhard”).
“Women like confidence” is one of those special categories of statements that is true yet misleading. My dating became a heck of a lot more successful when I decided: fuck confidence.
I’m neither going to pretend to be confident nor feel sorry for myself.
My best advice for dating – in fact for most social situations – is to ask people about themselves and pay enough attention to the responses that you can feed back something they said a minute ago (not only respond to their last sentence). Everyone likes that.