Not necessarily just professional skills, but all skills.
I am saying that confidence comes from being able to navigate the world with skills you have learned and not from dwelling on your history (alone or with a therapist) long after you already understand it.
Your emotions are too powerful to control and you can't change the past. Literally the only thing you can control is your behavior. What you personally, actually physically do.
If you take that control and focus it on being competent; you will gain confidence. You will trust yourself.
Meditation and therapy are good for introspection and knowing yourself. I have had a ton of breakthroughs of self understanding with both of those. But it's the times that I took action that made an actual tangible difference in my life.
I am a competent singer (for instance). That did not come easy. I spent hundreds of hours at karaoke sitting there my heart pounding waiting to get called up in front of people I didn't know. I have been boo'd. I have been on a stage when someone yelled YOU SUCK when my new girlfriend was there.
I kept going back and now, at the beginning of the night when everyone is far too sober to sing, I sing 4-5 songs. I have absolute confidence that if there is a microphone somewhere I will walk up to it and sing. Without music or prompting. I love music and that was my driver, but it was the focus of my behavior that lead me to being competent at singing. When I was single I'd ask attractive women to go up and sing with me. It bonds you to sing with someone, it feels great. I am not a great singer, but I'm more than good enough for karaoke, which is all I care about.
Replace singing with communication, coding, negotiating, driving, cooking, debating, talking to women, bidding on jobs, leading developers, writing, etc.
I have done this successfully with two things in my life: dating and interviewing. There's some overlap, but I sucked at both. The only way I realized I would ever get better in any reasonable amount of time was to do it over and over and over again.
I will say, it is emotionally very difficult and painful, but leads to the most rapid results.
Two major things happened to me from massive amounts of repetition:
1) I lost my fear and could be my authentic self (which is maybe what confidence is)
2) I really started to understand what 'good' and 'bad' were within the context of whatever I was trying to improve.
I would add, if you decide to do something like this, make sure to take care of yourself. Facing your fears like this, especially if you're doing it aggressively, is stressful. Make sure to exercise or do something else that allows you to blow off emotional steam.
1. The very definition of confidence is exposing your true self to the world and being OK with how it is received.
2. Knowing what good/bad are. Yes, that helped you become confident. You began to have better 'taste' and you had the confidence to know AND admit which side of it you fell on.
> lost my fear and could be my authentic self (which is maybe what confidence is)
can you share more about this? material you have read and steps you have taken that helped you with your dating life and more specifically with being more confidence.
The major step was deciding to do a ton of dating in a shorter period of time. I would go on 3-4 dates a week. It's exhausting to do this, so I could only manage this pace for a month or two before taking a few weeks off and trying again.
What I found is that the repetition allows you to reframe the situation. I started to no longer 'get my hopes up' or really anticipate the date, so that I wouldn't have an agenda coming into it. Instead it was much more casual: just get to know them and see if there's a good vibe or connection.
I want to point out that this is different than trying to sleep with a bunch of women. I was really going for connection, and if you go on a lot of dates you start being able to tell pretty quickly if there's a connection.
I really do think there's something to essentially 'brute forcing' your way to getting better at something. Make it so your primary goal is learning and getting better, and, remarkably, you will.
If you focus on being FUN to be around, dating won't be a problem. Are you fun? Or do you talk about serious things all the time and put that weight on everyone?
Figure out how to make people laugh, which starts with enjoying laughing yourself. Get very good at pointing out that things are funny and having a good laugh. Laugh at yourself.
I am saying that confidence comes from being able to navigate the world with skills you have learned and not from dwelling on your history (alone or with a therapist) long after you already understand it.
Your emotions are too powerful to control and you can't change the past. Literally the only thing you can control is your behavior. What you personally, actually physically do.
If you take that control and focus it on being competent; you will gain confidence. You will trust yourself.
Meditation and therapy are good for introspection and knowing yourself. I have had a ton of breakthroughs of self understanding with both of those. But it's the times that I took action that made an actual tangible difference in my life.
I am a competent singer (for instance). That did not come easy. I spent hundreds of hours at karaoke sitting there my heart pounding waiting to get called up in front of people I didn't know. I have been boo'd. I have been on a stage when someone yelled YOU SUCK when my new girlfriend was there.
I kept going back and now, at the beginning of the night when everyone is far too sober to sing, I sing 4-5 songs. I have absolute confidence that if there is a microphone somewhere I will walk up to it and sing. Without music or prompting. I love music and that was my driver, but it was the focus of my behavior that lead me to being competent at singing. When I was single I'd ask attractive women to go up and sing with me. It bonds you to sing with someone, it feels great. I am not a great singer, but I'm more than good enough for karaoke, which is all I care about.
Replace singing with communication, coding, negotiating, driving, cooking, debating, talking to women, bidding on jobs, leading developers, writing, etc.