Confidence

content="In the modern West, many men have forgotten their traditions on how to be aggressive and bring the things they want into their lives.">

As a youth, I always used to envy those men around me who acted with such directness, certainty, and speed, without any hesitation or hint of self-doubt. Growing up, I found myself defined more by inaction - by being a watcher, an observer - than by any action I took. I think most people are defined like this... stuck watching from the bleachers and the sidelines while the aggressive go-getter action-takers dominate life.

So I can understand and empathize when guys write in asking how to be more aggressive, like Wolf did in the article on being hard to please:

“Hi Chase, how can I be more aggressive in my life? I think about just being extra ballsy but I think a lot about the consequences so I end up not being aggressive. How can I be more aggressive?”

Some of this ties into what we discussed in "Threats and Opportunities;" the more focused on threats you are - when the focus is aligned in a certain way - the more you tend to retreat back from confrontation and aggressive action that might possibly end in rejection or worse.

But there's another side to this, too - and that's the inherent differences between those born aggressive, and those not so naturally inclined.

A little while back, in "How to Find the Woman You Most Want: A 10-Step Process," Vaughn commented as follows:

“Hey chase I've been looking around but I couldn't really find an article on self esteem. I have low self esteem and inferiority complex. I always compare myself to others like ALL the time and I mean all the time. With friends,family, and guys I see at bars, clubs, and guys with their girls. When I'm out I feel so lame seeing guys with girls and I don't have one, it makes me feel like something's wrong with me. Especially on Facebook when I see people showing off all the good things going on in their life and I'm just living my regular one. Then I keep thinking about bad moments in my past that replay in my head over and over making me think I'm really a loser. I don't mean to vent so much about it but I know your good with people and to be honest I trust your advice more than anyone else. Could you help me out with my self esteem, confidence, and getting rid of the inferiority complex and reliving past failures? Thanks Chase, all of this stuff will help me finally get my dream girl.”

So, how to build self-esteem... it's the 10 million dollar question.

Everybody wants to know. And everybody else has got a solution.

This isn't one I normally tackle, because I'm a believer in action, and to hell with the words. Once you're taking action and improving your life, self-esteem, confidence, and all the rest naturally follows (see: "Does Confidence = Success? Actually... No.").

Cast aside the pump-up, roll up your sleeves, and go get your hands dirty; that's the secret to all the great feelings you could ever ask for.

Yet... the questions about self-esteem keep rolling in. And they are worthy questions... little else is worse in the world than being low in self-esteem.

And since those questions about self-esteem don't seem to show any sign of drying up any time soon, let's tackle them head on - and give you the plan you need to take your self-esteem into the stratosphere.

The Daily Mail had a piece on U.S. college students' confidence levels shooting sky high while their actual competence and performance in the areas of their confidence dipped to new lows a few days back (the original article's here).

The article mentioned research finding that that more and more young people were carrying bigger and bigger life goals, and more and more of them were falling short and slipping into depression and anxiety disorders.

It quoted psychologist Jean Twenge as saying "You need to believe that you can go out and do something but that's not the same as thinking that you're great," and, "An intervention that encourages [students] to feel good about themselves, regardless of work, may remove the reason to work hard."

I thought it was a fantastic article for one reason: the clear differentiation between confidence and success.

I've always found the, "I just need to tell myself I can do it, and then I can do it!" approach to "achieving things" to be a little daft, and it's nice to see some research backing this up.

I'd like to talk with you a little about this today, because, if this research is anything, there are fewer and fewer people out there like me who think that the secret to success is just going out there and busting your chops until you get there, and more and more who think you can just think your way to success.

Well, I've got news for those people: nuh-uh.

Once you've begun working on your abilities to pick up girls for a little while, you'll soon find you run into a flavor of situation again and again that manifests in a variety of forms and a variety of ways: girls acting not as you expected them and you feeling a little surprised, shaken, and fazed.

This post is all about how you can be unfazed, even in the face of the sometimes-disorienting behavior of new women you'll meet while out and about.

Because as you'll come to realize, getting fazed - and remaining unfazed - isn't necessarily about having already been through every situation already. Instead, what it's actually about is a state of mind and freedom from "hoping" for a specific outcome to come about that you can't control.

In addition to that, there are a number of specific, technical steps you can take that will free you from the risk of ending up fazed at some point, because they avoid taking you down the roads that most often lead to guys getting fazed.

And the funny thing is, the more you're able to remain unfazed, the better able you are to bring about the things that can end up seeming out-of-reach to the men who do get fazed.

But, we're getting a bit abstract. Before I say more, first allow me to explain.

Dominance is a touchy topic. It's positively loaded with cultural baggage - in the West, we're averse to both the idea of being dominant over others and of others being dominant over us. It has all kinds of ill-favored connotations that most would rather just avoid. I'm throwing all of that out today though and talking to you about how to be a dominant man, political correctness and sensitivity aside - and I'm going to teach you a lot of things you didn't know about dominance before today.

In the post on how to be an alpha male (without becoming a stereotype), we broke down the difference between what's generally thought of as "alpha" and what alpha actually is, and about the character of the nomad -- the man who's neither alpha, nor beta, nor any other role in a social hierarchy, but instead operates outside it entirely.

I've long noticed a failure to differentiate among "being alpha" and "being dominant" in those who discuss social dynamics. They're treated as one and the same -- if you're being alpha, you're dominant, and if you're being dominant, you're alpha.

But they aren't the same. Being alpha's about heading up your group.

Meanwhile, being dominant... that's about something else altogether. What that is -- that and the winner effect -- is what this article is all about.

Short post, but one I don’t think needs a lot of explaining to get the point across.

A guy meets a girl on the street. He likes her; she seems to like him. They talk for fifteen minutes or so and get along just fine. He feels like he ought to do something more with her… but he isn’t sure what, exactly. So, he asks her for her phone number, tells her it was great meeting her, and the two part ways.

Chances are, they never see each other again.

Sure, maybe they do, but odds are they don’t. How many of the phone numbers you take turn into lovers? Even if your follow-up is amazing, your conversion rate of numbers-to-lovers is doubtfully any higher than 20% – maximum. And if your follow-up is anything short of amazing, expect a conversion rate substantially lower.

Some years and an entirely other identity ago, I was a rap artist. It’s not something I talk about a whole lot these days, because the person I am today is completely different from the person I was then and anyone I meet today has a difficult time imagining me in that light.