...A friend asked me...

A friend asked me, "How you you gain self confidence when approaching girls..." - The only answer I knew to give him was the "success breeds success" line...

Was I off base?
Am I missing another vital part to that question?

Success breeding success is only a superficial way to gain self confidence. Take it away and you have an empty person. Confidence needs to come within.

~Meg~ wrote:

Success breeding success is only a superficial way to gain self confidence. Take it away and you have an empty person. Confidence needs to come within.

Thank you. That needed to be said by someone other than me.

I'll be the one to say this (because I want to know too),
but that's not really answering the original question.

This is my take on the replies:
The dictionary defines confidence as a feeling of assurance, trust, or faith in a person or thing,
and the best way to gain a feeling of assurance, trust, or faith is to repeatedly prove yourself successful, am I wrong?


-vH

Success does breed success, but where do you start? And, what do you do in dry times? It still has to come from within. Then, success TRULY breeds success.

When it's superficial, as Meg stated, then if you have no success, you are not confident. This means you were never truly confident to begin with. You were never comfortable with yourself, within. You never actually believed in yourself. You never KNEW that YOU can do it, with or without any external success breeding/leading the way.

You HAVE to know, WITHIN yourself, that YOU are valuable, YOU are WORTHY, YOU are successful, regardless of what the outside world says, thinks, or does. Regardless of the crap that gets thrown at you. Because this world WILL knock you down, and if you aren't secure with yourself, within yourself, you will just lay there and die.

When you are secure with yourself, it's a whole different picture, and therefore a whole different ballgame.

Larock has said about me in the past . . ."you are oozing with confidence". I've had several people now say I'm a natural, I'm so good, I'm the man, etc. You know what? I didn't get there BECAUSE they said those things. I got there . . . THEN they said those things. I got there on my own first, because it came from within.

You HAVE to believe in YOURSELF. If you don't . . . no one else will. Why should they?

So yes, we did actually answer the question, lol.

Larock, you only touched the surface my friend with that remark. If anything you might've confused your friend even more. You can't take a concept that someone has little or no learned knowledge of and just sprout it off to them like they are suppose to get it. You have delve deeper when a question like that is stated.

If anything we all can carry with us the potential for success, but I don't know if success just naturally breeds other successes. Granted, with one success you do know that you can accomplish that goal, but a new goal surmises that is much tougher to attain. Will you try for something else or perservere remain confident until you get the second success that you garnered.

Im with Meg and La, no surprise there. It drains down to the person. The person must find it within himself/herself to grab that confidence that is for the taking out there. The great thing about confidence is no one has a monopoly on it. Confidence is free to attain. Peace,lvoe and succe SS

LaRockStar wrote:

A friend asked me, "How you you gain self confidence when approaching girls..." - The only answer I knew to give him was the "success breeds success" line...

Was I off base?
Am I missing another vital part to that question?

I remember my first year playing college ball. We were horrendous. About half way through the season our head coach called a team meeting and passed out a stapled packed of "inspirational" quotes.

My favorite one (and the only one I remember) went something like this:

"If you have no confidence and no faith in yourself, make believe you are someone else; someone with balls and brains, and act like him."

Success is too objective of a term to explain confidence. To me success boils down to being happy. There is an author who with a harvard phd has decided to live homeless and write about it...if hes happy hes successful. Then there are people who might be considered successful, like say Kurt Cobain...he obviously wasnt happy and thus to me not successful.

Confidence is a beleif in yourself and your abilities, and this beleif does not have to be based on past events. Past events can and do have an impact on this beleif.

A good example, Donald Trump. He has failed more then most business people i know of. Last i looked, he had filed for bankrupsy 7 times in his life. Hes failed as an entrepenour 7 times, yet he keeps trying and is confident that he can acheive his goals. This is because he beleives in his own abilities.

This debate is the reason why I stand opposed to learning a scripted-method to start. You go in and say these really cool and interesting things; you'll definitely pull numbers, have a fair chance at make-outs, and possible lays. However, you are a product of your success. When you don't have success you go back to ground zero, and thus have to start all over; outcome-dependent.

This approach to "confidence-building" is like building a house starting with your walls and roof; you have no foundation. Sure the house may stick around for a little bit, but eventually it will crumble because you have no foundation. Internal security is the most important part to everything you do in life. If you have a strong center, you WILL get girls.

The real truth is that PUA will NOT grant you this elusive confidence. Only you can do this. Take time to look at yourself and recognize where you are. Then think of where you want to go, and bridge the gap. Look inside and light the fire that is your own self-worth.......and BE A MAN

nuked wrote:

BE A MAN

I love it when guys tout this.

The problem is . . . those who aren't naturals always start out the same way. Without confidence. In other words . . . you're a man physiologically, but not mentally. The bottom line is, there is no avoiding that truth.

nuked, I understand what you are saying, and what you have always said about this. However, what you continue to miss is that there is nothing wrong with using a crutch at first. The REAL problem is, most guys don't bridge the gap. nuked, I also started with all the scripted stuff. All the methods, routines, etc. I don't use them now, but I started there.

LaRock's problem ISN'T canned material. It's much deeper than that. However, like most guys in that position, there is nothing THERE to draw from to BEGIN with, so the scripted stuff helps to give that crucial start. From there, you gain confidence, THEN you bridge the gap.

Now, you ARE right that only HE can truly gain this confidence for himself, and that's where the PEOPLE of the community come in. However, just like with the guy I was with in Florida . . . I told him what to say on the spot to open several sets. Or I told him what action to take to open the set. When he did what I said, the sets opened. He was using someone else's material, mine, but it gave him the launch pad to start with. From there me and my wing explained what happened, where he went right or wrong, and helped him to see mentally how to do better.

Now, this guy DIDN'T do EVERYTHING that I told him to do, so he didn't get laid. He COULD have. But, he DID have his reality shattered and those lessons remain with him even now and are bouncing around in his mind. He still talks to me about them. He started with someone else's material, and it is helping him to gain some confidence. He sees what he CAN do.

Just like Diesel's quote above . . . you step into someone else's shoes temporarily to see what you can ultimately do.

So yes, true confidence does come from within, but that takes NOTHING away from the benefit of the methods and scripts.