rutger5000 said:
tahrey said:
First of you make it sound easy to choose for confidence, that's not something I claimed.
OK ... I had a concern I may have misread you, seeing your reply, so I went and re-read. But I'm not so sure that I did, not entirely anyway. You may not have expressly said "it's easy", but it did seem implied. Perhaps you're confusing "confidence" with "consciously knowing that you can/should do something, or wanting to" (i dunno, i'm not in a good mental zone for expressing myself right now) vs "actually having the innate bravado to go and do it".
Now this might be very personal and subjective. But isn't confidence just a choice? Don't you just choice to be confidence and be prepared to face potential consequences? (Such as rejection?)
In some cases yes, though this strikes me as being more in the "judgement" or "moral" zone.
"I will do this, no matter what happens after". You can force yourself to do that, and for the right situation, it can work. Like owning up to having broken a window as a kid. But it doesn't work like that all the time, and particularly in relationships. If something gets overwhelming it can break you, regardless of the "choice" you thought you were making.
The key here is that word. Thought.
No. Confidence is only slightly a conscious thing. The very large part of it is subconscious. Chemical. It comes from the hindbrain and is a slave to instinct and habituation - and sometimes adrenaline (nb, as in reaction to sudden shocks or threats - e.g. i'm going to fight this major problem and not wuss out, and opposed to cortisone, which is what you get from fear and drawn out stress, e.g. trying to work up to asking out a pretty girl and completely losing it) - which is why you have to work to build it up, rather than just upping and deciding "I'm going to be more confident now!" and it just HAPPENING.
It's not like choosing to turn on a light, flicking that switch. It's more like choosing to be able to bench press 200lbs. You can want to do it with all your heart, but if you try it immediately after making your choice, you will fail. You'll have chosen to lift that heavy weight, but you won't do it. You can choose to exhibit a lot more confidence, a lot less selfconsciousness, be more extrovert and assertive, but if you haven't put the hours in to pull yourself out of that rut you will fail. The conditioned responses
that have nothing to do with your human intelligence kick in and betray you.
I've been there. I've tried to give the big performance because it
had to be done. I've sucked up the butterflies, made sure I'd read the notes, knew what I had to say, run through it in my head ... got out on the stage in front of 200 eager faces ...
And completely lost my shit and been unable to get a sound out. Trying to find the words - at first - and getting nowhere. And after the first few moments, not even that. Mind no longer screaming, just shut down. Massive cortisone rush. Confidence drop-out. Out of the comfort zone.
Now that I've gone through the rest of the process of turning myself around mentally as previously described - and note, it wasn't even so much on my own impetus at first (so much for "my choice") - it wouldn't be so hard. I'd still have to force myself, and would probably be squeaking a bit in the first instance ... but then remember that... hey ... they don't know who you are, really ... they're not actually looking at you, but if you talk they will listen ... be calm ... breathe deep then let it out whilst making words, and be sure to move your mouth to actually enunciate something rather than "mffhuughgmmnfmlle"... and GO...
Plus I've learned more about the world of love and relationships, not just hunting "that one girl" and thinking of all the 101 ways in which it could go crashingly wrong if I put a letter or a hair out of place. They're human. There's lots of them. Amazingly, not all of them think I'm a complete troll, so the pressure's not there to be superincrediblyperfect. (Basically, I've stopped being an early teen in the body of an early 20s person). Let's have a ball.... or at least, when life gives me any time to meet people and have said ball when I'm not working or having a rare couple hours in the pub with mates.
Like I said it may be subjective, but to me it's always been like that. And believe me I hardly ever had a good reason to be confident.
Well bully for you. I'd love to have had that amazing - and I really do think it's amazing and admirable - ability to just "man up" and somehow alter the internal chemistry (or is it a matter of having different a different chemical balance in the first place?) so you can just DO the emotionally hairy stuff and it not being a challenge all the time.
I'm intrigued ... why is it you say you "don't have a reason to be confident"? Bad looks? Low intelligence? Clumsiness? Poverty? Missing limbs? Congenital illness? What? Because a good deal of how you come over to people and make a positive impression is BEING confident in the first place. The whole "being yourself" gig.
((Potential flamewar starter: It's not autism is it?
Though AFAIK that usually drives you in the OTHER direction, it's not always the case))
Doesn't being confident just mean that you ignore that annoying little voice that tells you you suck, no matter how hard it screams? And isn't ignoring that voice just a choice? I still have plenty of social interactions that make my heart race because of nerves, but I just choice to ignore them and do what I have/want to do.
Now this is what was making me think that you have a reasonably good "natural" (or nurtured) level of self confidence in the first place, and simply don't understand what an unconfident person - we can say "damn yeller coward" if you like, it's about the same thing - experiences when put into a situation where they need to conquer Teh F33r. I mean ... WHAT "annoying little voice" telling you that you suck? It goes deeper than that. It's an animal thing, as I said. I don't get voices - I'd be checking myself in to see a shrink if I did. I may question what I'm doing, but I could have the answer to everything in my frontal lobes and still be beholden to what's going on back around the brainstem.
The heart racing a bit is one thing, but I'm amazed you can tell; it takes a lot to become aware of one's own pulse or heartbeat without applying physical pressure somewhere or exercising close to collapse. Personally I'm much more aware of the incredible tightness in my gut that's about to make me spew, the shortness of breath, a strange paralysis of the larynx that's making it numb to all nervous stimuli, a narrowing of the vision, weakness in the limbs, fuzziness of thought and an overriding urge to GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE.
Well ok, that's the extreme, system shock version of it, which is more like a panic attack, and leads to crying fits and all kinds of unpleasantness when you recover and puts you at risk of being called a great big girl's blouse. I'm glad I haven't experience that sort of thing in several years. More often it's like being at the top of a roller coaster or peering over a cliff... there's not many who'd willingly go down that coaster drop if they weren't strapped in to a vehicle lacking any user controls. And learning to cliff dive (or skydive) usually involves getting pushed at some point (or at least closing your eyes and crossing your arms), so your natural self preservation instincts can be shown: Look. It's not so bad. You do this, and do it the right way, you DON'T ACTUALLY DIE. So, can we maybe do it again next time without so much drama?
Having friend(s) in the same boat, at the same time and place is also a massive help. A problem shared, and all that. Plus you have someone you can scooch off away from the action with if it gets too rough for one or the other, recuperate, and try again.
(It's odd yknow ... I could willingly hurl myself down a gnarly hillside on my bike, go SCUBA diving etc, rip a potentially deadly machine to its component parts to fix something then happily use it afterwards, but faced with the emotional risks ... the threat of shaming myself over some little gaff, the way I look or sound, etc ... there was no chance. Isn't it wierd what your subconcious will choose to fuck you over with? The one thing where you won't actually get hurt, and can generally be escaped with a change of town or even nightclub, before fading anyway? Maybe it's why I got so deep into the internet, in the same way that I'm spilling and preaching to you now with only minor occaisonal doubt or nervous concern. You're at one remove; it's a letter, not a face to face meeting... and in fact, further removed because you're not using your own name, and there's the opportunity (outside or IRC) to change what you've wrote before presenting it.)
I don't really see how you are in disagreement with me. You talked about forcing yourself to overcome your fear.
Yes. Because lack of confidence, and depression, was ruining my life, and could easily even have ended it. Because I had other people who were able to point this out to me, to suggest things I could do to improve it, and that I HAD to improve it. Because I was lucky enough to have not sunk so far into the pit that I could see the truth of it, and took steps to overcome. But they were steps. Not a leap. I didn't wake up the next morning and think "Hurrah! Forwards into my new, gleefully extrovert life!", running down the street in my underwear shaking the hand of every passerby. It took YEARS from that low (I'll tell you when it probably was: sometime summer 2005, and I'm still slowly climbing the ladder now, in 2011) to get to some kind of even "slightly below average" level, with many hiccups and what I'll generously call "learning experiences" along the way.
If you want to experience incredible confidence dropout, by the way, the kind which has you abandoning a party with free drinks to go wander up the road, lie on a wall and make an international call to your parents, and eventually renting a scooter to fuck about in the mountains away from all human contact then becoming unstuck when it's time to get fuel, try going to a singles-and-families watersports activity camp (intention: chill out, make friends) where it turns out 95% of the attendees either don't speak your language, or have it as a second tongue and much prefer chatting to the others in their incomprensible first one. One which is totally different from what the locals use, which itself bears a passing resemblance to gibberish.
(That, or have a go at 24 hour square in Benalmedena ... solo. Jesus. I could have opened a pharmaceutical lab and bottled my own brain juice, and NOT because of taking any recreational substances.)
Imagine doing that, imagine going to a alone bar where you don't know anybody and sit down with some guys that you don't know and have fun.
Yeah, that's still a major challenge. But then, that sort of thing rarely happens in real life anyway. Last time it did (apart from the examples immediately above), was when I started uni - and that was late 2000. "In a complete state" doesn't even cover it, and it's just a good thing that the dorm's resident lunactic practically dragged me and a few other sad-sacks out of our rooms to go and get collectively slaughtered.
Imagine going to talk with this girl and asking her out even though you can see no possible reason why she would find you attractive.
Now that's a harder ask, because first time round, I was the one being asked. Which is quite a boost, and makes it easier to do the asking. Mind you, so does alcohol, which was generally involved. Now... well... it's still going to be tricky as it's going to be a bit of an out-of-the-blue question, but hey... she can only say "no". Chuck it in whilst talking about something else, having broken the ice. Your problems actually start after she says "yes"...
Imagine yourself starting a new job while you don't feel you could do it properly.
Been there, done that. But it's somehow easier to get yourself there on the day and to start trying to do stuff, when the thought of being stony broke and on the dole for another six months fills you with GREATER terror. The discomfort of not knowing anyone, not knowing where anything is or how to do the required tasks is comparitively peachy. Besides - that sort of thing is a
task. It's a challenge. It's not the altogether far more complicated and risky business of human interaction... viewing meeting people in a pub or asking a girl out as the same thing is maybe one way around the problem, but it does sort of take the passion and enjoyment - the humanity - out of the whole thing.
(which brings us round to the autism / aspergers thing again (is there a law for this issue being raised on fora, much like Godwin for the nazis?), and really I was joking before: because if there's one thing that sufferers of these conditions are terrified of, it's that. Because it's just too much to follow, to take in, to deal with all at once; there's so much to keep track of and remember, so many lines inside of which you must keep your crayon. If you can find the guts to successfully deal with people and display that confidence, it's not aspergers ... but it may well be arrogance?)
Isn't that choosing to be confident? All the reasons not to do it come from insecurity and self-doubt, when you still choose to do them anyway you choose being confident.
That's so contradictory. If you're being held back by insecurity and self doubt, that's not being confident. It's those things, with the instinctive or conditioned blocks, that are the roots of unconfidence. You can be doubtful of it, unsure of whether you're doing the right thing, whether you should do it, even if you will come out of it OK. But if you go and do it anyway, you're either insane, or you have some small nugget of confidence driving you on. It's OK ... I may not know exactly how to do this, but I'll wing it. It's OK, this may not be the right way to approach this situation, but at least it'll get done. Etc.
And no, for the record I'm not confident about myself at all. I must admit I do have a big "fuck that!!!" mentality. That's more of a thing I don't care about potentially consequences I'll deal with those when the time comes. I wouldn't call that confidence, just chosen stupidity.
Well then, shall we go ahead and file that under "insanity"? Though I suppose stupidity - your words - can be a suitable explanation. Stupid people are often very confident in their actions, because they can't conceive of it going wrong. They don't have the holdbacks.
Unfortunately this can be a curse as much as a blessing, and it's why I spend half my job fixing shit that stupid people have broken, secure and confident in their ability to not fuck things all up despite not having a clue about what they're doing. Or maybe it's that they're scared to ask for help; they have a lack of confidence when it comes to looking ignorant or vulnerable, rather than it being a key to greater abilities.
... I still really don't properly know what to make of what you're saying. You claim to have very poor self confidence, but at the same time, seem to be brash and full of bravado - the "fuck that" attitude and all (I have the occasional "fuck that!" moment, but usually only in words, or after getting VERY wound up. There's etiquette to be adhered to if you don't want to get sacked/disowned/ostracised... Unless you mean "ah, fuck it, I'm bored of feeling scared now"). Maybe the latter is bluster from being on an internet chat board? I don't know.
But I do know that's easily fucking long enough, it's probably below freezing outside and I'm going home on my motorbike because my car's in a sorry state; about halfway home last night I lost confidence in its ability to not lose a wheel and crash horribly and kill me - yes, even vs a 2-wheeler on frosty streets. I pushed on because I had to, figuratively crapping myself, but it's a good job no-one wanted to talk to me.
Agh. Digressing again. Whatever. It's time to go and this post is way too long. Anyone know an editing agency I can submit it to?
