I don’t think you can be truly confident.
Quick examples:
– You can be good at something, but you can’t be confident about it, because there will always be someone better who could humiliate you
– You can feel good about yourself in general (you like who you are and your current situation), but you can’t be confident about that either. Your personality is just a mix of different influences, you don’t know what’s truly yours.
– You can look and walk in a confident way, but that is useless because someone can attack you no matter how you walk.
– You can like the way you look, but you better not base your confidence around that. There will always be someone who doesn’t like you, no matter how confident you are, so being confident is useless.
You could pull apart anyone’s “confidence” in a quick conversation with them.
People are putting on fake fronts, trying to look confident, while in reality they are noones. And the worst thing is, people buy into their acts.
39 comments
Confidence literally means having the self assurance to do something.
As long as I have that I can be called confident. No one can take that away from me
You have other existential things going on. Get into therapy. Maybe you have problems with not being “the best,” but don’t put that on others. That’s your problem to contend with.
Confidence doesn’t mean that you’re bulletproof, indestructible, or that nothing bad can happen to you. Of course it can. I can be a confident person, but still get attacked by a mugger or fired from my job or something. That doesn’t have anything to do with my confidence, which is my belief in my own ability to handle adversity – not the degree to which I can avoid it forever.
A confident person doesn’t go through life scared of the obstacles you listed. They live their life knowing that shit happens sometimes _and they can handle it_.
You are thinking binary. Confidence is a scale. The better u are the more confident u can be. U are arguing that you can’t be 100% confident. But me, as MMA fighter, I am pretty confident I can take down 99.9% people. So my confidence in taking down people is higher than my grandma’s for example
Confidence is not only possible, it is practically inevitable once you reach a certain level of skill and security.
There’ll be someone out there who’s putting in more effort for the same and he/she might humiliate you
* You don’t have to be the best, it’s good enough to be quite good. You don’t even have to be the best in the room.
* You can totally be yourself by trying different things and choosing what you like.
* I don’t get that point.
* Your confidence can come from any source, including how you look. But it must come from within, not from outside.
Good luck pulling apart someone’s confidence, when they have actual confidence. They will basically just accept that you think differently and walk away.
I used to think like that too, but have realized confidence is being self assured. You don’t need to be the best, and it’s okay for people not to like you. Do you deserve the humiliation? Hell no. Some people are just awful but you can’t control other people’s actions, only yours.
I think you have some pretty confused ideas about what confidence actually is. let’s take your examples turn by turn:
>You can be good at something, but you can’t be confident about it, because there will always be someone better who could humiliate you
this is a weird leap you’re taking, from someone being better at something than you to them humiliating you. is that something that has happened in your life, or just something you think might happen? I ask because I don’t think someone has ever tried to humiliate me because they’re better than me at something I’m confident about.
like, I am a confident cook – the food i make tends to be pretty good. I’ve fed plenty of people who who are better cooks than me, and none of them have ever humiliated me, they tend to just enjoy the food and make appreciative noises and sometimes ask me for the recipe.
>You can feel good about yourself in general (you like who you are and your current situation), but you can’t be confident about that either. Your personality is just a mix of different influences, you don’t know what’s truly yours.
I’m also not sure I follow the leap here – of course our personalities are mixtures of our influences and experiences, but I don’t understand why that means we can’t feel confident about them? I am a fun person to have at a party, what does it matter if I learnt how to be fun at a party by going to parties and seeing what other people did?
>You can look and walk in a confident way, but that is useless because someone can attack you no matter how you walk.
you are weirdly obsessed with being attacked and humiliated, my dude. the fact is that on the vast majority of the days in my life, I am not going to be attacked in a way that I can’t defend myself from. and you’re talking like the point of walking in a confident way or looking confident is to stop a person from being attacked, when it is actually just an emergent property of them feeling good.
>You can like the way you look, but you better not base your confidence around that. There will always be someone who doesn’t like you, no matter how confident you are, so being confident is useless.
one person not liking the way you look should not be enough to even dent your day. they are just one person. you’re calling confidence useless again if one person isn’t feeling you, but that’s not the point of confidence?
I have direct experience with this one, in that I am not particularly conventionally attractive but I have plenty enough admirers to be getting on with. if you have enough people to date/ have sex with/flirt with/whatever it is you actually want from life, you can just discard everyone else’s opinions, because they literally do not matter.
>You could pull apart anyone’s “confidence” in a quick conversation with them.
if what you mean by this is that if you’re a dick to a person (even a confident one) you might make them sad for a minute, then gosh, that really is the discovery of the century. but that doesn’t make their confidence fake, it just makes you a dick.
Having confidence does not mean you always think you are the #1 best at something or in some category. Being confident means not allowing the negative thoughts of others to tear you down and being able to do things without bringing yourself down. It exists on a scale, not just “confident” or “not confident”. One day you might look like a bum and feel self conscious, the next day you might love how you look and don’t care too much what others think. It’s not a lost cause, it’s weighing how much other peoples opinions ~really~ matter in a given scenario. For example, A stranger not liking your looks does not weigh the same as your mother being disappointed in you on this theoretical emotional scale. It’s all relative.
In conclusion, you’re saying **”I can’t be confident, as long as I have a flaw”**, right?
Sounds like a mindset born out of insecurities combined with a cynical worldview.
Perfection is unobtainable. But, confidence is.
Confidence itself means **feeling sure in youself or your decision, not in arrogant way.. but in a realistic way.**
Some people have too much confidence, while some has way less to the point they don’t even know they have it.
If you are talking about absolute confidence.. I think no one should be that confident, since no one is perfect. You’re right, it’s a delusion.
But, to be **confident** itself does not mean that you feel invincible, **it means that you have a good amount of confidence to support yourself.**
If you trust yourself, if you trust your decision, then you are confident. It’s as simple as that.
>You can be good at something, but you can’t be confident about it, because there will always be someone better who could humiliate you
Confidence is knowing that it’s fine if someone is better than you.
>You can feel good about yourself in general (you like who you are and your current situation), but you can’t be confident about that either. Your personality is just a mix of different influences, you don’t know what’s truly yours.
Okay, but you chose to adopt certain influences because they resonated with who you are. That’s not inauthentic.
>You can look and walk in a confident way, but that is useless because someone can attack you no matter how you walk.
Attack you? Lmfao what?
>You can like the way you look, but you better not base your confidence around that. There will always be someone who doesn’t like you, no matter how confident you are, so being confident is useless.
Why are you so hyperfocused on if one person doesn’t like you? People are confident because they know it’s FINE if someone doesn’t like them, because they’re happy about who they are.
>I don’t think you can be truly confident.
Hard disagree
>You can be good at something, but you can’t be confident about it, because there will always be someone better
There’s absolutely no reason to base your confidence on being the best at something rather than simply being good at it. If you hold yourself to that standard, then yes, no one could ever be confident in their skills. Heck, even being better at something doesn’t gaurantee that you’ll perform better than everyone else, it just means your more likely to perform better. Even the best occasionally get outdone by others.
>Your personality is just a mix of different influences, you don’t know what’s truly yours.
Your personality is your personality. There’s no requirement that you need to only feel confident about things you picked up independently. We all grow from outside influences. That’s most people’s primary source of growth.
>You can look and walk in a confident way, but that is useless because someone can attack you no matter how you walk.
Who’s going to attack you? You mean violently or do you just mean verbally? If it’s the latter, then this kind of builds off the first point. Being good at something doesn’t mean you’ll never lose, heck being the best doesn’t even mean you’ll never lose. It’s the same thing here. Having a good or confident walk doesn’t mean *everyone* will like you, even having the best walk doesn’t mean everyone will like you.
Some people are just always going to dislike you. That’s not any fault of your own if you’re not doing anything wrong.
>You can like the way you look, but you better not base your confidence around that
That’s true, you should never base your confidence on something external like that. These kinds of things are good for a boost but not the fundamental source of confidence.
>There will always be someone who doesn’t like you, no matter how confident you are, so being confident is useless.
Again, a repeat of point one. Expecting everyone to like you is expecting to be able to beat everyone at a sport. It doesn’t matter how good you are, statistically you’ll still lose occasionally. Similarly, it doesn’t matter how good of a person you are, there will always be some people who don’t like you.
Just because the best sports players lose occasionally doesn’t mean they suck and should stop playing. Just because some people don’t like you is no reason to lack confidence.
>You could pull apart anyone’s “confidence” in a quick conversation with them.
Only if they’re vulnerable because their confidence is built around external factors. Mentally strong people can withstand most attacks against them but everyone struggles with this. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Confidence means believing in yourself. In particular, being okay with the fact that something might not go your way.
I feel like you misunderstand confidence and in reality only see people who’re faking it in an attempt to make themselves feel better instead of people who’ve accepted the reality of a situation and are comfortable putting themselves at risk knowing they’ll be ok.
You can’t be confident people will like the clothes you like, but you can be confident in knowing that you like them and if someone meets you and likes your style you have a real healthy connection so you choose to wear what you like instead of faking it trying to be someone you’re not.
You got alot of other answers that point out how you got it all wrong and why…so i don’t rly need to do it as well..
..But, anyway…if your “confidence” was often times so easily brought down by other people’s opinions or doings, then you sadly never had an actual confidence. That’s prolly also the reason why you don’t seem to get what confidence really is.
Hope ya get actually confident so you’ll see how life gets 10times better.😊
Can’t be brave without being afraid
Nahh… some people are just assured. They feel comfortable enough with some aspects of their lives. Furthermore, no one is saying confident = perfection. Most people have insecurities, even if they’re confident in other aspects of their lives.
You’re confusing confidence with arrogance/ignorance/delusional. Most of the scenarios you described are signs of the above.
Confidence is where you act or engage in things where you have “confidence”, “assurance”, “faith”, “belief”, that you are doing “the best you can”, “reasonable”, “good enough” actions towards a thing.
There’s no faking it, it’s knowing what your capable of and acting in earnest.
Rather than get bogged down in ways you can fuck up, just do what you know best and if you fuck up, acknowledge and move along without getting all sad/self defeating about it.
Hard for some, too easy for others. Get gud.
Confidence is knowing enough that you’ll get back up and try again and again. It is delusional but that’s life for ya.
Why would someone being better humiliate me? Of course I can be confident about being good at something. I don’t have to be the best, and I can learn from people who are better than I am. It’s not humiliating.
I don’t get your personality thing, at all. Seems like something you pulled out of thin air.
And what does someone attacking me have to do with anything? I should not be confident because someone could what, hit me? Shoot me? That’s no way to live life.
And I like how I look, it’s not all of what I base my confidence on, and if someone doesn’t like how I look, so what? Confidence has nothing to do with people liking me. A lot of people do not like me. (And honestly some people hate confident women.)
I am not trying to look confident. I am confident. Are there things I am not confident about? Sure! But that does not matter to me. Never could get the hang of physics. Or baking bread. Or winged eyeliner. That’s a tough one. But that doesn’t break everything else down. There are plenty of good things about me, plenty of likable things about me, and plenty of things I am good at. And I can work at the others, if I want to.
I don’t care if you think I am fake. I know I am someone. My mom and dad know I am someone! (That would bother me more, I think, than if my husband thought I was no one.) It’s not an act, and if someone buys into it or not does not change how I live my life, or how my life plays out. I am absolutely confident about that.
No matter what I pick the most enjoyable thing. I’m awesomesauce.
I think you should try imagining the best version of yourself and think of yourself as a partially carved sculpture. Grow into yourself and believe you are/will be that version.
You could ask users on this sub to clearly describe confidence, as agreed by psychologists for decades, and most of them will fail.
Real confidence isnt that someone will like me..i dont care if some body dont like me..that calls real…..read it some where in reddit comment
I too have hunger for external validation
It sounds like you’re conflating pride with confidence. Ex. I can be confident I can walk a mile without falling over. That doesn’t mean I believe I’m better at running than Usain Bolt.
You are waaaaaay over thinking things. Confidence is being comfortable with yourself and really not caring what other people think.
“Better looking”, “better at”… Who cares?
I really don’t think you’re using the word confidence in a manner that matches its common usage. It’s not about being perfect or the best, but in feeling comfortable with your skills and yourself to know that you can and can’t do.
As for other people? Who cares what they think. Do someone doesn’t like you, so what? You shouldn’t let other people have that much control over your self esteem to begin with.
As for being humiliated, well, no one can humiliate you or embarrass you unless you let them. They can act, but you and you alone decide how you react.
It really comes to how you define the term “confidence”.
While for some it might mean being overexagerative and delusional of one’s own abilities and characteristics, as you’ve put it, others see confidence in the comfort of trusting themselves to navigate through the uncertainty.
it’s about being sure of yourself. when you’re confident, you’re likely to have grip on your ground and less prone to lose traction.
confidence is built. you prove self-assurance through familiarity and experience. bad things are bound to happen, it’s better to face them when you’re on your side.
Eh, it’s about attitude. Someone being better at something than me doesn’t humiliate me because I don’t need to be the best. If I know I’m good that’s enough. Someone not liking me doesn’t ruin my day because I don’t need or want everyone to like me.
I think what most comes across in your post, OP, is the phenomenon of “black and white thinking.” It seems like to you if something isn’t 100% perfect, then it’s 0%, which is a very frustrating way to go through life.
I do not think that word means what you think it means
Confidence isn’t about putting on an act, or being invulnerable to “attack” or stress. It’s simply not having those insecurities in mind, not thinking about all those things you point out.
I’m confident about how I look, despite having permeant acne scars and being bang average looking. So what, my girlfriend is still a knockout.
I know that some people don’t like me, some people actually really seem to dislike me for almost no reason, they just don’t like my personality. This doesn’t affect my confidence at all. It’s like water off a duck’s back to me. In fact, I think my apparent confidence is part of why some dislike me. I assert myself in a self-assured way, that some read as arrogance. But why should I care? I don’t exist to meet other people’s expectations of who I should be.
Sure, my confidence can be rocked, but so what. I can do lots of pull-ups, but just because someone can do more, doesn’t mean I’m not strong or fit.
Do lots of small things in life that make you feel assured to be who you are, and forget about what others think.
Even the smallest things, like always being clean and showered, always wearing clean nice smelling clothes, and having a clean room and living environment. We can all do that, and believe me, it’s a great base for confidence.
Then you can exercise regularly. You don’t have to be the strongest or have a magazine cover physique, but you CAN be strong and fit.
Work hard to get good grades, or learn a trade, so you can make a decent income. You don’t have to be the smartest or the richest.
Those things are all within your control, and if you start with all those things, you should be proud, and let that lead to confidence.
Confidence is relative. If I’m teaching someone how to box who just started out, I’m confident in my abilities and that I can teach him something new.
However if Mike Tyson walks into my gym, I’m now the one who has more to learn so in relation to him I’m less confident in my abilities and how much I can teach him.
I can be confident in who I am, confident in my character when I stay consistent and true to my values.
Another example could be that I can be confident in the fact that I can attract a partner, not every girl on earth, but that’s not necessary anyways to lead a fulfilling romantic life.
You have a baseline of confidence that shouldn’t be volatile and make it so you can live a happy life no matter who you subconsciously compare to, so to me real confidence has NOTHING to do with delusions.
I disagree
I feel like when I try to be confident then someone makes fun of me thinking I’m being arrogant or somethinf
this doesn’t make sense i don’t think you really know what confidence is???
Stop coping bro. Believe in yourself and nobody can get in your way.
I had an epiphany in high school: LITERALLY EVERYONE WAS FAKING IT!
I had massive anxiety, imposter syndrome, and self-confidence issues growing up. I walked around high school people-watching all the time, trying to figure out why everyone else seemed so self-confident.
Then it hit me: you can’t possibly get that much life experience by high school, so everyone must be putting on a front & faking it! Everyone was just wearing a mask of confidence!! That realization really changed my high school experience! Two other notes:
1. I’ve heard it said that TRUE self-esteem comes from making & keeping promises to yourself. As a perpetual student of productivity who also struggles with ADHD, I guess I’m hosed for life lol.
2. A lot of it boils down to how much energy you have. The guys on sports teams are unusually confident because they feel good all the time because they’re healthy & feel good. When you’re bursting with energy, you don’t typically struggle with things like anxiety, depression, and panic attacks because you’ve got that buffer of high energy filling you with the magic dopamine juice all the time.
I recently got on top of some health issues that have been plaguing me all my life & have come to realize just how much having energy zeros out things like depression & anxiety and gives you a literal solid feeling of confidence that you can rely on & trust. It’s like that old song “the wise man built his house on a rock & the foolish man built his house on the sand”…I went from having an easily-washed-away foundation to having a very, VERY solid foundation, all from having my health issues fixed!
So in one sense, yes, being confident is just being delusional, because hey, you could have an aneurism at any time, right? But in practice, I think it’s mostly because people have reliably high & steady energy and because they feel good or feel fine pretty much ALL the time, they have big walls that keep the anxiety & depression & imposter syndrome & other self-confidence struggles at bay, and most of them don’t even realize those walls exist to protect them!