Telling someone to “just be confident” is like telling a sad person to “just be happy.” Confidence is built, not flipped on like a switch. Give people real steps, not empty mantras.
Telling someone to “just be confident” is like telling a sad person to “just be happy.” Confidence is built, not flipped on like a switch. Give people real steps, not empty mantras.
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But… sometimes the answer IS to just be confident.
not if you’re confident…
No, its true advice that actually works.
You can fake confidence, you know?
at the end of the day, one’s self is all they really have. If you can’t believe in yourself and be confident in your own abilities, what does one really have? It’s not to say the advice is always easy to follow, nor is it to say some people have significant issues finding this confidence, but it doesn’t cheapen the quality of the overall position.
Always looking for the “real steps” and people telling you exactly what to do when in reality the thing to do is just be confident.
You don’t sound confident.
Hahah dude no one likes insecure people so ya better start faking that confidence.
Just be confident in baby steps. It starts on your mind. Then the mirror. Then around the house. Then at work. Eventually you’re a confident person.
Take action at some point.
Lmao that’s actually how you build a confidence, forcing yourself to act until it comes naturally
Pretty f difficult at first but worth it
Its fake it til you make it.
It works. If you aren’t willing to fake it you’re never going to actually feel it.
(Cause once you realize you “faking confidence” is confidence itself it proves you can be confident.)
The same as “Just be positive!” 🤮 ridiculous “advice”
Telling people to be confident is absolutely not like telling someone to “just be happy.”
You literally acknowledge that confidence is a thing that can be built. So… build confidence.
Reddit is not your therapist or your best friend. If you need to know the specific steps and advice for how to build your confidence, it’s on you to figure that out. That doesn’t make the advice bad. We don’t know why you aren’t confident, so we can’t tell you specifically how to build your own confidence. That doesn’t mean that the advice to be confident is incorrect, it just means you need to do some of the work yourself rather than having other people hand you everything on a silver platter.
I can give you some practical applications for how to appear confident.
Good posture
Articulate speech
Clean appearance
Eye contact
Admitting you don’t know
Praising others
Solution oriented
Team player
Kind
Constantly trying to learn
Showing up consistently
I’m sure there are many more, but the more you can embody these kinds of traits the more confident you will appear.
guess how confidence is built
It’s as useless as saying “just think positive thoughts” to a person with depression, or saying “just do it” to one with ADHD, or saying “just ignore it” to an autistic, or “just be realistic” to one with scizofrenia or “just work out more” to one with chronic pain. Useless advice since none of those are giving help on how
The thing is, sometimes it really is that simple. Hit them with the good ol “we ball”
I agree with the baby steps. It does sounds empty but only you can explore what it’s like to be confident.
Everyone is different. Be confident in making mistakes. Be confident in being wrong and accepting it and improving. Be confident in the way you present yourself. Stand straight, walk like you own the room, etc.
Be confident in accepting the uncertainty, knowing that you’re still going to be okay. Be confident in knowing what you’ll do with heightened emotions after they’ve been processed.
I feel like “just be confident” is not just empty but it is so broad. Bc again it’s different for everyone.
Wrong
“You can do it” or “you are good at X” assuming some level of truth is generally helpful.
Fake it until you make it.
Confidence stems from actual substance. If it’s about dating world, ofc good looking people are gonna be confident without you saying that to them, cause they know they are lookers.
If it’s job interview, someone who graduated top of his class or from some top schools, is going to be very confident.
So yeah, it’s lazy advice.
It’s lazy for someone else to not put more effort into telling you what to do, but it’s not lazy for you to refuse to figure it out yourself?
Fake it till you make it works for most everything.
Just be happy is valid as well. It’s not about “how”, but about what you need to work on.
Confidence is just a buzzword that doesn’t actually carry any meaning. The people who are ‘confident’ aren’t that way because they themselves did anything special, it’s that other people around them are making them confident.
Telling people to b confident is something that goes around a lot in the dating world so I’ll use that as my example.
When a man is ‘confident’, he appears more masculine and attractive. Do you think he feels that way because of anything he did; No, he feels like that way because the people around him are validating how he acts. Ugly or unattractive men are not going to seem confident because he has no one around him to validate him. It’s like trying to build credit with no credit.
Some men naturally seem more confident because the people around them are always giving them positive reassurance and attention. Some men literally get zero interest from women and therefore will never get any confidence.
I personally had friends from my college days who were literally never rejected. Every woman they approached or wanted to hookup with were receptive. You think he was honestly doing anything special? He was just the conventionally attractive dude and didn’t have to do anything…women just wanted him and would do anything to be with him. It was so bizarre but I’m sure he had ‘confidence’. 🤣
If someone is giving you that advice it’s basically a meta critique of how you carry yourself tbh
I think I get what you’re saying, you have to tell people how to be confident instead of telling people to just be confident, right?
Oh hi, I’m Troy Mclure. You might remember me from such self-help videos as “Smoke Yourself Thin”, and “Get Confident, Stupid!”.
Every successful person you see had a vision of where they want to be and they “faked it until they made it” (at least to some extent, they still did the work) to get there.
You mimic others who have had success– maybe you study an extra 2 hours because “that’s what ‘x’ did to get to where he’s at”, maybe you practice an instrument for hours every day because that’s what you heard to do to become a master, etc.
And while you’re doing it you feel like a loser, a failure, and an imposter until one day you realize– “I’ve really progressed, I *AM* skilled at this, and I do belong here.”
Ok so if one of your friends is asking your advice because they are lacking confidence, what would you say? What would be your advice?
Lol, the person receiving help is complaining about the lazy person who didn’t watk hard enough solving their problems.
Then how would you suggest saying it? You look at what a confident person does and just fake what they do. You’ll eventually be confident. Same with happiness. Look at what happy people do and mimic it. That’s how you become happy.
I think most of the time, if that’s the answer you’re getting, its probably the right one.
However, its easier said than done. So yeah I pretty much agree with you. People can say it to you with ease.. but changing something like that is going to take a lot of psychological change. That isn’t easy & there isn’t a clear starting point. Without any extra resources provided on how to be more confident or idk, links to a good therapist, the people who say that certainly didn’t say enough.
Anyone disagreeing with this is a part of the problem
For me, my anxiety, just being confident has worked. I’ve found the more I expose myself to, the more I pretend to be confident, the easier this shit gets. Somewhere along the way it stops being an act.
True.
Confidence, unlike being happy, is a state of mind, not emotion. There’s no trick to being confident other than just doing it.
It’s very difficult for a passing stranger online to actually give good advice on how to gain confidence because:
We don’t actually know you as a person and why you lack confidence.
Low self-esteem and anxiety aren’t rational. They’re emotional. So it takes a lot of work, potentially with a therapist, to develop a healthy mindset when you’re struggling with them.
I also think you should have some initiative. Yes, if you’re lacking confidence, you should work to gain confidence. But that doesn’t mean that everyone should be able to immediately give you a step-by-step guide on how to do that. Not all advice is supposed to be total: a lot of advice is meant to simply guide you in the right direction and be a starting point for you to develop your own goals and work towards them.
…the answer is to be confident tho
There was a time where I was a lonely bastard who was heavily depressed as a result of lacking human connections. When I got to high school I literally forced myself to be around people. The more I was around my classmates and other students the more confident I became to speak up and engage in convos. And in 2 years my personality and life changed a full 180° with me being the midpoint of any social gathering I came to.
The answer is to be confident. Your problem is thinking that being confident = have no care in the world, no overthinking, no questioning yourself, nothing. The secret is, those things will always be there but the more balls you grow to be confident and brave enough to at least try the less those things will give you a headache.
Be confident enough to start. That’s all they’re asking for. Everything else will come after that.
(Also as you mentioned, “being happy” is quite the same and it’s a legit good advice to give. It’s not about to be 100% happy all the time with no depressive thoughts and sadness, it’s about starting to focus on and notice the small, happy things in life you can be grateful for. Eventually it’ll turn over your overall mood resulting in actually being happier)
But it’s BOTH.
It’s not lazy, it’s true, simple, and straightforward.
Confidence is just an energy. You can have it naturally, or you can fake it. But it’s something thats attractive.
It is impossible advice; you can’t just be confident. You. Can’t fear the loss/fail
“how can I change my results without changing anything about my habits… Because every habit I do is absolutely maxed out to perfection considering the cards im dealt.”
Y’all need to just started saying this and stop sugar coating your tru le intentions lol.
What’s even worse is: “Don’t overthink it” — it’s like: EXCUSE the-ever-living-FUCK-out-of ME for being smarter than you are and considering all options.
Like when people say “You should wake up at the same time every day, that’ll fix your sleep problems”. Ohhhh right yeah thanks
I feel like the biggest issue is that confidence needs to be backed up by something like good looks, talent, skill, accomplishments etc. Otherwise this fake confidence makes you look like a fool to other people if you have nothing to back it up.
I use my anxiety against itself and bombard myself with how much regret and self hatred I’ll feel if I pass up an opportunity because I was nervous.
Fake it till ya make it
I did it by acting/pretending to be confident. Like I was in a movie.
The change in how people interacted with me built my confidence. It’s not easy but if you don’t try it you’ll never know
It’s meant to reinforce that confidence is a personality choice. You have to choose the confident thing in the moment
it works, though.
I kinda see the both side of the argument. I have anxiety issues.
I had pushed myself and did things that I thought was little bit too much for me to chew on, but I managed OK.
I also struggled immensely with that. The fun, high anxiety before it starts, feeling sick because your body is not relaxed for a very long whiile etc.
Going out of your comfort zone is a good thing imo, but you need supports. Sometimes there are no other solutions other than, implement as much suppots as possible with the last step being “faking it”as you won’t be able to get rid of the anxiety completely (generalised anxiety disorder is a health condition for a reason).
I think this is a fact when u look deeper into it. Not exactly an opinion
How I feel about it, I’ll try to describe it.
What is uncertainty – it is addressing your inner attention to yourself. How do I look? How do I sound? What if this is stupid and they’re gonna laugh at me? What if I’m bad/fat/not funny/not right/etc.
This blocks your brain and brings panic. From now all you can think of are endless possibilities “how bad I am”. And you wait for judgment, you imagine it in detail. That is how your brain tries to save itself from future “problems” (“If I’ll say this – they’ll decide I’m stupid – and how should I react to their bullying”). Also your brain thinks that these problems are real and rational, and need to be solved somehow (and it works on its max which causes this introvert’s stress in front of other people).
First thing you need is a rational argument – nobody is perfect, nobody looks perfect, nobody is a genius enough. An amazingly looking photo model told me how many complexes she has, how “fat” she is, and she sees a lot of “small ugly things” in her appearance. I laughed – “whaaat? No way, you are so beautiful” – and she was grateful, because I was the only person who told this to her (or the only person that day, lol).
So, no matter how you sound or look – there always will be tons of things you can see in yourself which may (or may not) give you a complex.
What is the point of focusing on them?
So instead you should move your focus on the other person. And make it positive. What do they look like? What are they thinking of? What do they like or dislike? Hobbies, interests, life, thoughts. There are a million questions and details you can bring on the table. Each person is a whole world. People are interesting as f..k.
Same example with the photo model girl. Instead of thinking how sweaty I was, how I looked, how I sounded – I started asking her questions.
“Wow, you must shoot often for commercials?”
“Well, not really, I’m a student so it is not regular, but I like it”
“What kind of student?”
“Biology”
“Are you kidding me, I’d never guess! Do you like to be a biologist or photo model more?”
etc
I didn’t think about myself at all. I didn’t have an intention to hit on her, just talking. I didn’t concentrate on possible judgment. But I moved the focus on her and sincerely asked her questions like a kid who met a cop 🙂
There are a lot more – say, facing your fears on purpose, which builds this “I don’t care” behavior. Honest compliments for people. Wide world view, when everything is an opportunity and very interesting.
I drank beer with a) mafia dudes, b) the police. Wore a dress in front of people on training. Was in charge of a photoshoot with 100 ppl. Calmed a huge drunk and aggressive dude by making friends with him. Saved friends from a big group of young criminals in my youth. Once a stranger asked me for a direction and next 5 min we were drinking vodka and he cried.
There is a lot of interesting stuff in this world if we just for a moment move the focus of our attention from our inner monologue to the other person and give it a chance.
I half agree. I feel like “just be confident” is usually in response to dating.
You don’t build confidence, you dismantle fear.
Genuinely. I feel like confidence comes once you realize insecurities are so selfish. Like you really think people are that obsessed w you that they’re thinking about you that much? Embrace the good traits to overshadow the bad ones is a start
Entirely dependent on circumstances. If this takes place where the person who needs advice is a friend, then obviously it’s a pretty one-ply way of giving advice. Since you two are friends then there’s a lot more of a connection and mutual investment which warrants a detailed explanation. If a friend asks you sincerely how to be confident and the other person was just “lol be confident” that person is a shitty friend.
If this advice is just from strangers on the internet or people you hardly know then it’s kind of warranted. Strangers don’t owe other strangers interpersonal time for detailed advice. I put it in the same category as bumping into someone in a crowd and their response is just “watch it!” when there’s a bit more to navigating a crowd than just “watch it!”.
“Just be confident” is the only dating advice I ever get from women. It’s literally the dumbest thing you could ever say. You might as well say “have you tried NOT having cancer” to someone with stage 4 leukemia or “just stop being poor!” To someone on skid row.
I think it really depends on what kind of person you are. Some people have to build it up, some people just know. It took me so long to realize that people didn’t just know what they were good at, where their strengths are, things like that.
“Fake it til you make it”
The bond between brain and body is wild. Sometimes even when you’re feeling down laughing or smiling releases feel good chemicals and helps you improve your mood. Pretending to be confident might sound impossible, but look at how “confident” people act in a scenario and do the same. Maybe it won’t land the same but the more you practice it the more believable it will be and weird thing happens, you learn how to be confident
Honestly, whenever some says to just be confident, it’s a nice way of saying your personality and behaviour are lacking in a fundamental way with who you are with like you’re with the wrong crowd. Find hobbies that you like and reach out to those with the same interests. You’ll get there.
Going to med school before doing brain surgery < “just be confident”
Fake it til you make it – worked OK for me when I would avoid situations like asking for advice or doing new things. The confidence comes as you realise no one actually gives a shit.
I consider this a popular opinion.
Most people are aware that this is common advice given by people who have already achieved their goal, usually as part of a motivational speech or self help advice. It is rarely paired with context specific actionable advice, and everyone who has heard this knows that.
So downvote.
Most advice is lazy/useless bullshit. About 10% of it is decent.