Are there any good books desling with the topic of confidence? not self help books, more the concept of it

are there any good books desling with the topic of confidence? not self help books, more the concept of it.

Confidence is a false sense of understanding who you perceive others to perceive who you are. It's literally playing pretend until its a habit and not pretend anymore.

>tfw confidence turns in hubris and then nihilism

so at what point does it develope into "not pretend anymore"? and why do some people have no problem with it and others struggle so much?

When you get to the stage where you are genuinely confident about your competency as a human being.

I think that most successful people go through a period of delusional confidence in their late teens/20's that actually helps them function without being blinded by how incompetent they really are. Depressed people, especially people on certain boards on Veeky Forums, are acutely aware of how incompetent they are at all times and feel cripplingly insecure.

I think it's to do with isolation, young people should be insulated by friends in order to foster this (temporary) false confidence until they can take the reigns themselves and stand on their own two feet. Somebody who spends a lot of time alone is naturally going to introspect and find fault literally everywhere.

Obviously this isn't the rule but I definitely think it's a pattern among certain people.

interesting. isn't this "false confidence" going to collaps in the face of reality someday?

Its a gradual thing, it never just happens out of the blue. You have to make conscious decisions to step outside of your comfort zone, find things you like about yourself, talk to people you don't know, etc. basically any action you take is a choice and you get to choose the confident choice even if you aren't confident. Then one day you'll wake up years later an be all "boy I was a long haired, fat, lazy, piece of shit, and now I'm not. Wow."

I've gone from being a complete narcissist to childish levels of insecurity so I've spent a great deal thinking about confidence and similar topics.

Random lazily formulated points about confidence I've noticed from experience. The opposite is typically true when you're not confident. You also have to understand that confidence works like a self-fulfilling prophecy most of the time.

>When you're confident, you feel welcomed and desired everywhere.
>When you're confident, you're in an "expansive" position. You want to share your knowledge (which you're convinced is right), you want attention, you judge, etc. You are comfortable with yourself and consider yourself "worth sharing" with others.
>Confident people start out feeling like they know more than they do, but this way they actually expose themselves to challenges and end up learning more
>I suspect being high on confidence encourages psychopathic traits like low empathy due to extremely strong self-conviction (imagine a soldier that kills without remorse)
>Due to self-fulfilling nature of confidence and its ability to create "luck" and success, other people find it attractive and gather around confident people perhaps in the "search for answers". Consider Trump's election campaign.
>In romantic relationships, displaying confidence shows that you can survive without a potential partner, thus creating a stronger desire in the other to appeal to you and impress you for reasons I'm too lazy to formulate

Yes unless you do what this user says:

>In romantic relationships, displaying confidence shows that you can survive without a potential partner, thus creating a stronger desire in the other to appeal to you and impress you for reasons I'm too lazy to formulate

Now I feel slightly less lazy.

It usually generates a feeling of unworthiness in the other, the question "why does this person I really like think I'm not good enough for him/her" pops up in their mind, and humans naturally want to find out why and do something about it. As sinister as it sounds, I think this is more or less the foundation of romantic relationships.

That's why it's so hard to sustain a relationship where the partners don't feel equal in their worth. Both partners have to feel like the need one another to some degree. If one of the partners genuinely feel (because sometimes it's feigned) that "I can walk out of here whenever I want, I have other options, better options even, I don't need you" and the other person feels the opposite - it's a recipe for disaster.

that was very insightful, thanks user.
do you have a theory on what determines one's level of confidence? it doesn't seem to be rooted in facts and more based on your own conception of yourself. do you agree with this user in that it is more likely to not have high confidenc if you are introspective? are "knowing oneself" and "high confidence" not compatible? or does it merely depend on the level of satisfaction you get from introspection, iow, if you're happy with what you see (probably because you have come to the conclusion that you're doing better at what you're inspecting than your peers), it raises confidence and vice versa?

Crippling self-doubt still exists in those that are confident. Confidence is, again, what other people perceive you as, it is not your own self introspection that confidence is based on. The only interaction these two concepts have is that the self-doubt/introspection must be set temporarily aside while deciding actions to take that others will perceive as confident.

Not to be narcissistic, but I have lots of friends (arbitrary facebook number is at 1700) and people listen to me ramble and tell stories and do things I tell them to do. This is because they believe I am confident. I am confident because my actions when around other people are what I want to do within the confines of social limitations. Most of my time alone is spent either studying, or attempting to improve myself in order to compensate for my own introspective downfalls. Worrying over things that have happened or wondering what the point of the daily struggle is for.


Confidence is a thing I guess.

so is there no true confidence? is it always an act? i can't believe that. wouldn't true confidence be based on you being satisfied with the result of your introspection?

If someone was satisfied with themselves completely, then it isn't true confidence. There isn't a perfect person, and someone who thought they were perfect wouldn't be attractive because they would lack the ability to grow. Someone who is confident wishes for self improvement and continues to do so. Part of others perception of confidence is admiration of what they want to be like. Constant growth and exploration is an admirable trait of someone who is confident.

i mean, you wouldn't have to be satisfied to the point of giving up improvement. but you could be satisfied with the progress you see, right?

>are there any good books desling with the topic of confidence? not self help books, more the concept of it.

All of them.

Sure! It's always good to take note of the fact you did better than the day before. I never strive for perfection, only improvement.

My mind is really foggy today, but I'll try to compose something meaningful. There are so many things I want to touch upon so it might turn into an incomprehensible mess.

Let me begin by saying I don't really know if you can distinguish between ego-driven confidence and "real confidence". They might essentially be the same thing, but grounded in different things. For example, grounding your confidence in how beautiful and rich you are is bound to implode one day when you stop feeling/being beautiful and if you start losing your money. Grounding yourself in doing good deeds towards others is more sustainable. But are they really different?

Ego-driven confidence is taking the idea of "how you want to be" and finding ways to be so. If you're convinced that helping others is the way to be, and start performing good deeds, you will reaffirm this cycle and start feeling good about yourself. You'll go to bed at night peacefully knowing that this is who I am, a person who performs good deeds. This is what I'm good at. You usually compare this idea of yourself with how you think society views a person like this, which might make you feel less or more confident. If you believe society likes this person, you will feel liked and desirable, or the opposite case: disliked.

But here's an important detail, "society" doesn't have to mean mainstream society. You can replace society with a different culture: everything ranging from punk rock to ISIS. Not everyone has to like your person, only the "society" you care about being liked by. So an ISIS guy wouldn't care much about Americans think of him as long as his ISIS fellas like him. As long as you feel that your person has support from somewhere, your confidence and value won't falter.

Most people's confidence seems to be driven by confirmation (both internal and external). People will seek out places where they can get the affirmation they crave. A girl who has grounded her confidence in beauty will find ways to get people to complement her. Someone who is more internally-driven can be like the good-deeds guy I described above. He doesn't necessarily need people to tell him how good he is, he already knows himself that good deeds are generally appreciated.

Confident people don't have to consider themselves perfect and are usually pretty good at admitting their flaws as long as their confidence isn't grounded in any of these flaws and they believe that the rest of them is good enough. They don't let some small flaws bring them down. However, a person who has grounded confidence in beauty might get a nervous breakdown by a pimple on their face.

you can explain this pretty good. thanks.

what would one do if he feels like he has good traits but fails at the things he thinks the society he wants to be liked by grounds their sympathy?
is the way to go in such a case to just strive to improve your performance in said area?

user, just get good at shit and make sure you make it intellectually taxing - work for it. also, be virtuous, base your self worth on a normative framework that you never cease to negotiate.

stop lazing about. very waspy of me to say, but it's all you can do. and try to be virtuous.

obviously. thanks for the explanations!

Let me turn my earlier post into questions

>Who do I care about being liked by?
>In what sense am I trying to impress them?
>Should I care and is it in my interest to care about being liked by them in the first place?
>How do they expect me to be and am I doing a good job at being this way?
>Am I the way I expect myself to be?

My belief is that people with sustainable high confidence have steady background support. Someone who only cares about what his family thinks of him won't crash when he performs badly at work, as long as he's a good father, mother or child. Someone who is religious and only cares about what God or the church thinks of him will keep his confidence intact as long as he practices his religion correctly. Someone who only cares about his work will take a big hit if he performs badly at work.

But this presupposes that you have to submit to something beyond yourself. We are social creatures and I can't imagine building confidence without trying to appeal to somewhere and having something tell you you're doing good. I'm not convinced by people who appear to have self-sustainable confidence - I just believe they're just good at hiding their source of it.

that was actually helpful. thanks a lot