Introduction:

Very recently, I stumbled upon a Reddit thread where a guy was making a point that men who have always been attractive-looking are naturally confident, because they were consistently given positive feedback by women, friends, and family.

With him, however, the case was the opposite.

He was complaining about how people around him who keep advising him “to be confident” miss the point that he has been on the receiving end of negative feedback.

And for him, that advice doesn’t fit, because he believes that confidence is a result of positive feedback.

This led to a discussion among Redditors in dating subreddit about the meaning of confidence with women and where it comes from.

I felt this was such a valid discussion, with some overlapping struggles of my own, that it warranted a take from my angle.

Confidence : Earned or Inherited?

Confidence is certainly a by-product or result of positive feedback.There are no two ways about it.

And on the other hand, it’s also true that negative feedback dents our confidence or our ability to become confident.

What is considered a Positive Feedback?

Positive feedback is simply an affirmation by others or the results produced.

So, if a guy is superbly good-looking or comes from a legacy, he may get constant positive attention from women and men alike, just by merely being. This makes him feel accepted, well-received, and gives him a sense that he commands value in the social marketplace.

This will naturally result in him feeling like a king and give him a sense of certainty about who he is and what he represents to women and society out there.

This kind of positive feedback will certainly give the guy real confidence, an inner certainty of positive reception.

So yes, confidence can also be inherited or fed into you.

But confidence can also be earned.

And this is where we need to pay attention.

Earning confidence in any domain of life is a process and takes tough work.

There’s an element of luck too in some domains, especially when the outcomes are majorly not in our control.

Take, for instance, the movie business. The outcome of a movie being a hit is less in our control and more in the control of how viewers rate it.

Imagine the box office of the movie is a huge success. The actor’s confidence gets heavily boosted in that case.

Even though this confidence was earned, it has strokes of luck too.

Similarly, in the domain of getting girls, confidence can be earned.

But it is complex.

To come to a point of earning confidence with women, we first need to get positive feedback from women, meaning how they receive you as a man.

Which begs the question: What can be done to get positive feedback from women who matter?

My Approach:

Avoiding Negative Feedback:

I worked the other way around. I first focused on avoiding negative feedback, and then moved on to gaining positive feedback.

I made sure I avoided the following mistakes to avoid negative feedback:

• Smell bad – I avoided at any cost to smell bad, especially from my mouth.
• Aim for women above my league (not at that point).
• Hanging out in social channels that kept me on the unfavorable side (e.g., I avoided loud and dark nightclubs in early stages).
• Aggressive cold approaching (unless you’re doing it just to loosen yourself up). The constant negative feedback or lack of positive ones from aggressive cold approaching can negatively impact us.

I Noticed:

As I avoided the above-mentioned things, I realized my self-perception in the eyes of women was not as bad as I had assumed.

Gaining Positive Feedback: (Advice I followed)

• Smelled very good. Layered my perfumes.
• Dressed well. Try color combinations like beige & white, olive green & black, sky blue or navy blue & white. Wear denim trousers or pants of different fabrics, over jeans.
• Dropped serious and heavy energy with conscious self-talk.
• Hanging out around girls casually. (I volunteered for two NGOs for over a year just to be around women).
• Approached women in proximity (seated / standing next to me). Women responds well, if it feels organic to them.
• Took help from other mentors.

The aim was to get small positive feedback in terms of how women responded to me.

This may sound like a slow process, but once the ball gets rolling, you start to imbibe into it.

Follow-up step

Once I started to get small and incremental positive feedbacks, I started to explore boundaries with women.

I traveled away from my home city to explore these boundaries. (It’s easier while traveling.)

Unlike earlier, I started to become more straightforward (not necessarily blunt). I socialized more in different channels to gain experience.

Gradually, I received more and more positive feedback from women of higher degree. Sure there were negative feedback along the way, but positive feedbacks kept me going.

This boosted my confidence, not just with women, but also in myself.

Conclusion:

Confidence isn’t strictly inherited, it’s earned.

Through mindful avoidance of negativity and repeated positive feedback.

You build self-assurance brick by brick.

Originally published : Way of Men : Sub -Reddit