Confident Man

Confident Man

A step-by-step Guide to Being Confident for Men

3

Getting Results From This Book

This book is the result of over seven years practical research, plus another four years of hard work to write and publish. I wrote it to help you become a confident man and to pay my bills. If you got it for free, something has gone wrong. Con-fident men know they have the resources to pay their own way. They are not cheapskates, and do not need freebies. Getting results requires a commitment to taking action. If you are reading this book without having paid money for it, you will lack commitment and are unlikely to follow-through on completing the program. This will prevent you getting the results you want and undermine your self-confidence.

When we pay money for something we naturally take it more seriously than when we get it for free. And the more seri-ously you take it, the greater the results you will get. Tell your friends about this book, but don't just email it to them or you'll undermine their confidence too. If you got this without paying for it, now is the time to buy a bonafide copy for yourself from the website at:

http://ConfidentMan.net/ebook.

I also encourage you to post a note in The Confident Man Forums to say that you are working on the program. Post whenever you make progress or have a breakthrough; you'll help inspire other guys, and get feedback to encourage even more progress. You don't have to go it alone; connect with us now.

4

Copyright © 2009-2011 Graham Stoney.

All rights reserved. You may save and copy this electronic book only if you are the original purchaser, and then only for your personal use. Beyond what is required to save or transfer it to your personal computer or reading device, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, photo-copying, digital transmission, recording or otherwise without the prior writ-ten permission of the publisher.

The author Graham Stoney asserts his moral rights to be identified as the au-thor of this work throughout the world without waiver.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Author: Stoney, Graham,

1968-Title: Confident Man: a step-by-step Guide to Being Confident for Men / Graham Stoney.

Edition: 1st ed.

ISBN: 9780980645309 (pdf.) Subjects: Sexual attraction.

Interpersonal attraction. Sex (Psychology)

Man-woman relationships. Dewey Number: 306.7

Published December 28, 2011 by Graham Stoney

Cover Design by Visual Communique Design: http://vcd.net.au

Created with OpenOffice.org Writer 3.2.1 Typeset in 12pt Palatino Linotype.

5

For Christopher and Michael, The best nephews an uncle could have.

6

Introduction

My Story

I suffered from a chronic lack of self-confidence from early child-hood right through much of my adult life. I am a sensitive per-son and was deeply traumatized by the ongoing conflict, hostil-ity and lack of empathic connection in my parent's relationship. My mother was, and still is, the dominant force in my family of origin. Highly intelligent but emotionally withheld, she was al-ways quick to criticize and never backed down in any of the petty arguments with my father that characterized their relation-ship. My father was relatively passive yet would often explode with frustration due to his inability to express his emotions or to handle my mother's frequent put-downs. She would berate him saying “You stupid creature; why can't you just tell me what you're thinking!”, not realizing the irony behind her nagging cri-ticism. Our home didn't feel like a safe or fun place to be much of the time. My two elder sisters both dealt with this in their own way, leaving me feeling excluded and abandoned a lot of the time. My sensitivity in this situation was always invalidated causing me a great deal of grief and leaving me feeling as if there was something wrong with me.

My parents were regular church-goers and every Sunday I'd be dragged along to Sunday school to learn about bizarre stories from the Old Testament. Sometimes it was fun, but mostly it was plain boring. I was a boisterous kid, and enjoyed running around

INTRODUCTION 7

the church a lot more than I did hearing stories that didn't quite make sense to me. God always seemed to be forcing people to do things they didn't want to do; no wonder they were so disobedi-ent. I was taught that I was sinful and needed to confess the bad things that I did in order to be saved from going to hell. Each week I had to come up with new things to confess. My mother often complained that I never kept my room tidy, but I couldn't imagine that I was supposed to just confess this same thing every week. Keeping my room as tidy as she wanted seemed just plain impossible anyway. Over time I was gradually beaten down and learned to submit to the authority of this God that never seemed to make an actual appearance in my life. I prayed to him many times for guidance or that he would stop my parents from fight-ing, but never got an answer. I knew intuitively that something didn't quite make sense, but I suppressed my doubt and became a Christian in my own right during adolescence. My discernment and ability to analyze complex ideas to extract the truth got in-validated as I learned not to think critically about what I was be-ing taught.

I felt insecure, nervous, conservative, and risk-averse. I was re-luctant to try new things for the fear that I might fail and look bad in front of other people. I avoided social situations that might make me feel awkward, and beat myself up in my head constantly over every little thing I did wrong. To compensate, I tried really hard to project an exterior image of confidence which left my friends and family unaware of how great an internal struggle I was going through. But inside, I felt terribly insecure, and just didn't feel how I thought I man was supposed to feel. I was so lacking in confidence that I found it difficult to make eye contact with other people, and felt a terrible sense of shame

INTRODUCTION 8

about who I was. I worried constantly about what other people thought of me, even though I told myself it didn't matter. This lack of confidence in my self, my sensitivity, and my ability to discern truth from religious fiction then flowed into other areas of my life, particularly at school.

I was fascinated with girls at primary school, especially the pretty ones. I always wanted to hang around with them, be their friend and get to know them. Much later I learned about sex and that there was even more fun things we could potentially do to-gether than I possibly imagined. The problem was that the pretty girls didn't want to hang around with me. I was desperately in-secure, anxious and needy; constantly on edge due to the conflict at home and the judgment of a God who was always watching my every move. Sex was laden with guilt and shame even though I wasn't having it. My basic drives and interests as a male seemed wrong and invalid.

At my all-boys high school sport reined supreme. The first grade rugby team had the highest social status, leaving more academic-ally inclined students like me as second rate citizens. I was the youngest in my year, awkward and terribly thin, leaving me hu-miliated to be the last person picked on sporting teams every time. I was the natural target for bullies, who had a field day with me. My religion taught me to turn the other cheek rather than stand up for myself, which just reinforced my victim men-tality. My intelligence, intuition and sensitivity were again inval-idated.

I was very smart but was bored a lot of the time in class and didn't really thrive until I discovered electronics and computers, which weren't yet part of the normal school curriculum.

Com-INTRODUCTION 9

puters became my escape from the potentially hurtful world of people. My anti-technology mother never seemed to approve, saying I was “playing on the computer” even when I was learn-ing to program and write my own games, simulation programs and even a telecommunications package. When I was working with computers, I didn't have to feel bad about myself. I could understand and master them, and they always responded in a predictable manner. People weren't so easy to get along with. Computer Engineering became a natural career for me. I excelled at university because I just loved learning about computers. I studied part time and had a number of different jobs, rapidly be-coming a rising star in the industry. Each employer was devast-ated when I moved on to a better job, and my ability as a com-puter engineer was my major source of validation and self-esteem. I didn't have to worry about how bad I really felt about myself when I was being successful in my career and earning a high income made me feel good on the surface.

I had a few girl friends during this time, including a couple of long term relationships which devastated me when they failed because I didn't want to marry the girls in question. I dated wo-men who were prepared to go out with me, because I didn't think I could date women I really found attractive. Relationships with women were by far the most painful area of my life and my continued failure to find a life partner made me feel both terrible and terrified.

After a particularly painful break-up with a long-term Christian girlfriend, I decided to examine my faith more closely and star-ted reading more widely, talking to people more earnestly and scrutinizing what I believed more closely. I came to the

conclu-INTRODUCTION 10

sion that the testimony about Jesus in the Bible consisted of unre-liable reports by superstitious, poorly educated first century people who lacked discernment and were eager to justify their faith in following him. I saw their God as the personification of human traits based on the relatively harsh experience of ancient living, and the whole Christian faith as an exercise in wishful thinking and mutual self-delusion. Albeit a popular one. I de-cided to stop kidding myself, left the church and eventually be-came an atheist.

Around the same time I started to lose interest in my work and moved to another company developing what I thought would be a more compelling application. In doing so I landed on the pro-ject from hell, and after three years of teamwork conflict just didn't care any more about the career I used to love so much. I was burnt out and depressed, but kept slogging away looking desperately for some way to make my career work for me again. Eighteen months later I resigned, desperate to escape, and fell into starting my own consulting business based on my reputa-tion; but I still wasn't really enjoying engineering any more. Now I had to face the deeper question: If I was no longer Gra-ham the Christian or GraGra-ham the Computer Engineering genius, who was I? I took up writing and spent several years exploring this question while looking for ways to make life fun again.

Throughout all of this the one underlying constant was my ter-rible grating lack of genuine self-confidence. I just didn't trust myself and felt anxious most of the time. I was so used to feeling this way that I thought it was normal and hid the fact by over-compensating: working really hard, taking on up-front roles, per-forming, public speaking, whatever. But I had a critical voice in

INTRODUCTION 11

my head that berated me every time I made any kind of mistake, especially in social situations and particularly around women. I was fortunate to have had a high paying career that gave me material success, but I lacked emotional satisfaction and was ter-ribly lonely despite being highly regarded and having plenty of friends. I knew that if I was to become truly happy I needed to address the underlying problem of my lack of self-confidence. So I decided to make this my primary goal, and through a combina-tion of the activities described in this book I tackled the problem head-on, leaving no stone unturned.

In the process I rediscovered who I was on a much deeper level than ever before. I wrote this book to help offer hope and advice to other guys with similar backgrounds who also struggle with gaining self-confidence, relationships with women, and all else that it entails.

Why Confidence?

I know from experience that self-confidence is the single most important factor behind our success and happiness in life. It is more important that intellect, education, career, sense of humor, looks, age, family background, social status, religion, belief sys-tems, or anything else.

When we lack confidence, we feel nervous about the challenges life offers us. We worry too much about failure, rejection, and what other people will think. We avoid taking risks that could potentially reap huge rewards because we're afraid of how we would feel if something we try doesn't work out the way we want. Our world contracts, we live a small life, and we become less of a man. We shrink instead of grow. We feel awkward and

INTRODUCTION 12

social interactions become forced instead of flowing smoothly. Other people find us difficult to connect to, and we repel rather than attract the people we want to be around. More often than not we end up settling for a job we hate and a relationship with a woman nobody else wanted; or we stay single and lonely. The world feels like a hostile place, and getting our needs and wants met is an uphill battle. Life becomes a struggle.

Conversely, having a sense of self-confidence makes everything in life go more smoothly. Confidence allows us to step out and take risks. Life becomes a great adventure ready for the taking. We see failure as a learning opportunity. Mistakes are OK. Trying anything new involves mistakes as a natural part of the learning process. We freely forgive ourselves and other people. We aren't afraid of conflict because we trust our own judgment. We make decisions quickly and easily, and get it right more often than not. We know when to listen to our gut instinct, and when we're simply feeling nervous but should act anyway. We become men of integrity who perform acts of courage by doing what is right regardless of what other people think. We are interesting and at-tractive to other people, especially women. Our world expands as other people look to us for leadership. We feel, act, and are powerful as we reap the rewards of maturity. Women can sense that we have it together, and want to be around us. Life becomes a smorgasbord of opportunity ready for us to partake in.

The relationship breakdown in my mid-30's was the catalyst for me to embark on the journey of self-discovery that led me to de-velop a genuine sense of self-confidence. As my confidence grew and life became less of a struggle, I realized just how valuable the process I was working through was. I met many other men who also struggled with self-confidence and found that we had a

INTRODUCTION 13

great deal in common. I tried many things along the way; some worked, some did not. This book describes the key steps that worked for me and that I also saw working for other men in de-veloping their own self-confidence.

If you complete even just half of the steps in this book, your con-fidence will skyrocket and your entire life will be transformed. You will discover who you are as a man, learn to capitalize on your strengths, and even appreciate what you currently perceive as your weaknesses. In the process you will grow from being a boy in a man's body, to a mature integrated man with a mission in life and a sense of "Just try and stop me!" when facing chal-lenges.

To make the program easy to follow, I've broken it down into four part as follows:

The Confident Mindset and Your Subconscious

Confidence is a mindset; a way of thinking. A belief system about yourself. This new belief system needs to be practiced until it be-comes subconscious. We like to think that most of how we act, what we do and how we relate to other people is directed by our conscious mind, but in reality this is largely an illusion.

Most of what we do is guided by our subconscious, and it's oper-ating on auto-pilot all the time. This is especially the case in our interactions with women. Our central nervous system broadcasts our subconscious beliefs about ourselves to other people in the form of facial expressions, body language and pheromones. These messages indicate, among other things, how competent we feel we are an any given situation, our sexual availability and how well matched we think we might be with any prospective

INTRODUCTION 14

partner who may happen along. Our conscious mind just doesn't have the processing power needed to do all this thinking for us while also coming up with witty repartee all at the same time. If you've ever felt self-conscious around an attractive woman, it's precisely because your conscious mind has attempted to do too much all at the one time and become overwhelmed.

Until you deal with your subconscious beliefs, it will sabotage any conscious actions you take which do not match the beliefs your subconscious currently holds. However, once you get your mindset right, you won't have to do anything in order to be con-fident and attractive. It's all about who you are, not what you do. I deal with this directly in Part 1: The Confident Man Mindset. But there's a paradox here. Your subconscious mind isn't going to change just because you've decided that you want it to. The in-tention of changing it is important, but it's just the first step. Your subconscious learns by focused repetition, reinforced by generat-ing strong emotions in support of the new belief. You need to ac-tually do stuff in order to change the behaviors and beliefs held in your subconscious. In particular, you need to generate evid-ence for your new subconscious beliefs. Once this evidevid-ence over-whelms your old self-limiting beliefs, your subconscious will switch and success in every area of your life will start flowing your way. Hence the activities in the rest of the book reinforce what you do in Part 1.

Mastering Your Emotions

Dealing with your emotional baggage and mastering your emo-tions is key to making the inner transition from boyhood to man-hood that will allow you to experience confidence in any

situ-INTRODUCTION 15

ation. The memories of unpleasant events from your past that have undermined your self-confidence are locked in place by the emotional charge attached to them. Present-day events will con-tinue to create an unpleasant emotional response in you if you don't address the way you respond emotionally to situations and circumstances.

Men are routinely trained to suppress emotions in western soci-ety, and you need to start unlocking this emotional repression if you are to become a fully self-expressed, confident man. I will teach you how to do this in Part 2: Mastering Your Emotions.

Attracting Women

Of all the areas of a man's life impacted by a lack of confidence, relationships with women would have to be the biggest and most painful. So I'm going to focus on women and how to attract them a lot in this book, because confidence and attraction are one and the same. The activities I recommend are heavily biased towards boosting your confidence specifically in areas that either involve or appeal directly to women.

When women are asked what it is that they find attractive in a man, "Confidence!" is always their first response. Women are bio-logically programmed to seek out men who can protect them, and a sense of confidence indicates that we are flexible, adapt-able, and capable of facing whatever challenges life throws at us. Women are emotionally intuitive and will pick up our insecurity if we lack confidence. A sense of confidence puts women at ease and makes us naturally attractive to women. Men who lack con-fidence invariably struggle in their relationships with women. We end up settling for partners we didn't really want, and have

INTRODUCTION 16

lousy sex when we get it at all. Women become a frustrating challenge, and we can easily end up feeling bitter and resentful both of the women who we repel, and the guys who seem to have that extra something that you lack which makes relating to women so easy for them.

If attracting women is a struggle for you, you need to know that

you are precisely as attractive to women as you think you are. It

doesn't matter how you look, what car you drive, how rich you are or anything else. Only a tiny minority of guys can capitalize on these things. For the rest of us, it all comes down to how con-fident we feel about ourselves. Given that you're reading this book, you've probably totally misjudged and undervalued your potential, and that's what we're here to rectify. If your life experi-ence has led you to think you are unattractive, then unattractive is how women will find you. On the other hand, if you think you

are attractive: then you are. You need to believe this deep in your

subconscious for it to have any effect. Just chanting a mantra like “I'm a Chick Magnet” to yourself will not work because if your subconscious doesn't already believe it, it will think you are lying and just ignore you.

I know how terrifying and discouraging approaching attractive women can be to the average guy. Instead of pushing yourself to approach women, get them to fly in under your radar where you can relax and be yourself. Put the shoe on the other foot, and get them attracted to you instead. Everything in this book will im-prove your ability to attract and relate to women, but I'll say a few things specifically about it in Part 3: Attracting Women.

INTRODUCTION 17

Life Skills and Experience

Developing your subconscious mindset is one thing. The other side of the coin is the practical skills and experience you need to be successful in life, and to keep women interested in you once you've got them in your orbit. The program in this book is de-signed to help you develop both your mindset and life skills at the same time. Along the way, you're also going to have a lot of fun, which is important for establishing the positive emotions ne-cessary to get this new mindset driven deep into your subcon-scious.

Repeated success is crucial to reinforcing your new beliefs and success breeds success. You don't have to wait until the end of the program to start experiencing the benefits; I'm going to have you practicing the life skills you need to become interesting to women in the very environments where they go while they are subconsciously (or even consciously!) searching for a partner. I'll cover these in Part 4: Life Skills and Experience.

I have listed the activities in each part of this book in roughly the order that I recommend you start them, but you don't have to stick to this order. You should work on at least one step from each part in parallel. It doesn't really matter where you start; what matters is that you start. Most of the steps will take some time to complete and the skills some time to learn. Many can be done in parallel, provided you don't overload yourself.

You don't have to learn every skill I suggest in Part 4. For ex-ample, if you simply Learn to Play Music (Skill 7), Join a Band (Skill 12) and Change Your Profession (Skill 22) to become a mu-sician you are certain to attract more women just with these three

INTRODUCTION 18

activities alone. In some cases there are dependencies. For in-stance, if you Learn to Speak French (Skill 10), you'll find it easier to Travel Overseas (Skill 15) to France. And you'll find it easier to Join a Band (Skill 12) if you Learn to Play Music (Skill 7) first. But even these dependencies aren't hard and fast: There's no faster way to learn a new language than to turn up on the country's doorstep, and plenty of bands have started when a bunch of friends who couldn't play for peanuts got together and said “Hey, let's learn to play music together!”. The skills from Part 4 that you choose to develop will reflect your own personality, but you may find you have to try a few in order to discover which ones really suit you.

Given that like attracts like, there's a good chance that if you're not currently brimming with confidence and success with wo-men, your current group of buddies probably aren't either. I re-commend your encourage your male friends to transform their lives by telling them about this book and about the work you're doing on yourself.

You've embarked on an exciting journey, and are in for a really fun ride. I look forward to hearing your success stories so please post on The Confident Man Forums as you start having break-throughs. If you have any questions, send them through too. Let's get cracking!

Here's to your success,

Email: [email protected]

Creator of The Confident Man Project

19

Contents

Introduction...6

Part 1: The Confident Man Mindset

Step 2: Take Responsibility For Everything In Your Life...28

Step 3: Stop Trying To Make People Like You...32

Step 4: Quieten Your Inner Critic...39

Step 5: Quit Worrying What Other People Think...48

Step 6: Avoid Comparing Yourself to Other Guys...52

Step 7: Connect With Your Father...55

Step 8: Forgive Your Mother...61

Step 9: Take Yourself Less Seriously...68

Step 10: Question Your Childhood Religion...71

Step 11: Change Your Thinking...80

Part 2: Mastering Your Emotions

Step 13: Drain Your Sadness...91

Step 14: Heal Your Shame...94

Step 15: Master Your Fear...100

CONTENTS 20

Part 3: Attracting Women

Skill 1: Learn to Dance...123

Skill 2: Learn To Flirt...130

Skill 3: Study the Art of Seduction...134

Skill 4: Get Some New Clothes...157

Skill 5: Get a Personal Trainer...163

Skill 6: Get Your Teeth Straightened...166

Skill 7: Learn to Play Music...168

Skill 8: Learn to Cook...174

Skill 9: Get Into Art...179

Skill 10: Learn to Speak French...186

Skill 11: Take Singing Lessons...189

Skill 12: Join a Band...192

Part 4: Life Skills and Experience

Skill 14: Learn Sign Language...199

Skill 15: Travel Overseas...204

Skill 16: Take up a Sport You Love...208

Skill 17: Get a Motorbike...210

Skill 18: Get Your Own Place...218

Skill 19: Do an Acting Course...222

Skill 20: Get On Stage in Community Theater...226

Skill 21: Learn The Art of Public Speaking...232

Skill 22: Change Your Profession...235

Skill 23: Invest in the Stock Market...241

CONTENTS 21

Appendix

The Next Step: Other Resources...248 Conclusion...252 Credits...254

22

Health Warning and Disclaimer

Do Not Attempt To Do Everything Recommended By This Book All At Once!

It took me about 7 years to do every step and learn every skill that this book suggests, and even then I ran myself ragged and ended up with chronic fatigue for over three years. So

take it easy for your-chosen-deity's sake. You won't be much

use to anybody if you're lying two feet under pushing up daises. Sure, girls love you to provide them with flowers and all, but not when they're growing out of your decaying nutri-ents.

I disclaim all responsibility for any injury or misfortune that may happen as a result of you following the program outlined in this book. This book is provided for your enter-tainment purposes only and is not intended to give advice on your physical, psychological, mental, financial or repro-ductive health. You retain all responsibility arising from whatever you choose to do with the information in this book.

So take your time, start with the steps that appeal to you most, and pay special attention to Step 2: Take Responsibility For Everything In Your Life.

Part 1: The Confident Man

Mindset

24

Step 1: Make a Commitment

When we lack confidence, we often shy away from making com-mitments. We hold out for a better offer, we worry that we may be committing to the wrong thing, and we fear the consequences of making a bad choice. We don't trust our intuition, worry about get-ting it wrong, and are afraid of miss-ing out on somethmiss-ing better.

All these fears are examples of boy-ish scarcity thinking: that there's not enough of whatever we want in life to go around, so we can't afford to risk missing out in the future by committing to the wrong thing now. And we don't want to get stuck wast-ing time and energy on somethwast-ing that doesn't end up perfectly the way we would have liked.

The obvious problem with failing to commit to things is that we miss out on enjoying the benefits that would would have got by taking a commitment on and following it through. We lose the ability to make decisions, and this undermines our self-confidence even further. It becomes a vicious cycle.

The remedy is to start thinking and acting like a man instead of a boy: to start making commitments, and to following through on

What To Do

•Spend an average of half an hour a day over the next year on this program

•Tell at least one friend about the program

•Join the Confident Man community •Start setting goals,

making and keeping commitments

STEP 1: MAKEA COMMITMENT 25

them. Practice making decisions more rapidly, and spend less time agonizing over them. Set goals for yourself and honor them. This is particularly important if you're a person who avoids set-ting goals and making commitments because you're afraid that you'll fail or that you won't follow through on them. Follow through on what you tell other people you are going to do; and if you decide not to honor a particular commitment, be straight with the other people that it affects and be clear with both them and yourself as to why.

Your first step is to make a commitment to yourself to follow the program in this book. Many of us are looking for quick fixes to our problems, but there are no quick fixes in real life. If there is a quick fix to lacking self-confidence, I certainly haven't found it yet. In my experience, building self-confidence requires stepping slightly outside our comfort zone on a regular basis, gradually expanding that comfort zone each time we achieve a win doing something new. Making a significant and lasting difference re-quires a commitment to doing this repeatedly every day over a long period of time.

Continuing to want a quick fix is just more boyish thinking which won't lead you to becoming a mature, confident man. Nor will simply reading this book. But committing to taking the ac-tions outlined in the program it contains certainly will. So set aside an average of half an hour each day over the next year to put the program into practice. Review the bonus material that came with this book, read the other books I recommend, and fol-low the action steps. If you do this, by this time next year you will have completely transformed your life and the way you feel about it. Take a moment to imagine how fantastic you are going

STEP 1: MAKEA COMMITMENT 26

to feel this time next year, and start feeling excited about making the commitment that's going to get you there.

Making a significant new commitment like this means giving up something else that was filling that space in your life before. Chances are that with slightly better time management you can find a half hour each day without too much trouble, but it may mean giving up half an hour of blobbing out in front of the tele-vision watching mindless brain-numbing drivel each night. Or getting up half an hour earlier. Or

spending less time with the loser friends you keep seeking approval from that actually just hold you back in life, and swapping them for new friends who inspire you to reach new heights. The more im-portant the thing you give up, the greater your level of commitment will be and the stronger your con-fidence will grow.

Telling other people about goals we

set ourselves inspires them and helps keep us accountable which makes it much more likely that we will succeed. Nothing can have a more powerful supportive effect on your commitment to your transformation than having your buddies also transforming their lives at the same time. So before you give your current bud-dies the flick and ride off into the sunset, pick at least one friend who you think could benefit from greater confidence and is also open to improving his life. Tell them about this book and about what you're doing, point them to the Confident Man Project website and encourage him to get a copy and begin working on

What To Avoid

•People who resist or criticize your efforts to improve your life

STEP 1: MAKEA COMMITMENT 27

the program himself. Compare notes as you go along and be there to support each other when things aren't working out. Join the Confident Man community online at http://Confident-Man.net/forums and begin telling other men about the goals that you are setting yourself, and about your successes and failures in aiming for those goals. There are no failures in life really, just learning opportunities. Other men can learn from your experi-ence just as you are now learning from mine. So share what you've learned with other people on the Confident Man forums, and together we can all get where we want to be in life much more quickly and easily than we can doing it alone.

28

Step 2: Take Responsibility For Everything In

Your Life

There are only two ways to live your life: by taking responsibility for yourself, or by remaining a victim. Being a victim is

disem-powering, depressing and ultimately soul destroying. Yet this is what most people do. Although they would never admit it to themselves, many men live their lives in victim mode because they are afraid of taking full responsibility for everything in their own lives.

Boys play victim by blaming other people or circumstances when things go wrong. Men take responsibility for whatever happens to them be-cause they have the confidence to know that no matter what happens, they can handle it.

Playing victim is so tempting because it allows us to avoid feel-ing bad about ourselves when thfeel-ings go wrong. Rather than re-cognizing that we are the major contributor to our failures, we shift the blame to someone else. This is partly because we don't know how to manage our distressing feelings, which I'll deal with in detail in Part 2, and partly because we are afraid of what other people think, which I'll deal with in Step 5. We've also re-ceived criticism for failing in the past and grown up with the

no-What To Do

•Take full

Responsibility for Each and Every Area of Your Life •Look for Opportunities to Take Advantage of •The Landmark Forum

STEP 2: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE 29

tion that failure is a bad thing, instead of seeing it as simply a learning opportunity.

The fear of failure is the driving force behind why we don't take responsibility for our lives. To do so means dealing with the ugly side of our lives that we often would rather avoid. Confident men aren't afraid of taking responsibility because they are pre-pared to deal with the truth that they discover about themselves when they do so.

The truth that many of us avoid is that we are 100% responsible for the present circumstances of our lives. No matter what has happened to us in the past, no matter how badly we have been treated, how badly we have suffered, how deeply traumatized we have been, or how cruel a blow life has dealt us, we are com-pletely responsible for how we have reacted to these events and hence for where we have ended up.

Conventional Psychology teaches that the way we are now is a result of our genetic predispositions combined with everything that has happened to us in the past; but this makes us a victim of circumstances. A more powerful truth is that the way we are now is a function of where we see ourselves heading in the future. We alone are responsible for the future that we create for ourselves, and for taking the steps we need to take to get there.

Any time we blame other people or external circumstances for things we don't like, we play victim. Often when we get angry with other people, it's because we have a victim mentality rather than a responsibility mentality. The one caveat here is that men who lack confidence often also lack the ability to express their righteous anger, meaning you probably have the opposite prob-lem and aren't getting angry enough. I'll deal with this in more

STEP 2: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE 30

detail in Step 16. Righteous anger is good and powerful; but vic-tim anger is a disempowering waste of our energy.

I have no doubt that at some point in your life, an injustice has been done to you. Life is not fair. To continue to expect or even want life to be fair is simply to perpetuate boyish thinking. The fact that life is not fair as actually an advantage to the mature man who understands this: if life were uniformly fair, there would be no way to improve your personal circumstances or the circum-stances of other people you care about. You would be stuck with the average of what is. But because life is not fair, you have an unfair opportunity to learn new things, and to take action to im-prove both your circumstances and the lot of those around you. You can create the life you want, and if you have your wits about you it will be a better life than what you would have if life were uniformly fair. But you must be willing to do the hard work of getting there and the vital step is taking responsibility for your-self.

Any time we think “That's not fair!”, we've simply regressed back to childhood thinking. The remedy is to replace this thought with “How am I responsible for this?” and to look for opportunities to take advantage of in our circumstances instead of playing victim to them.

When you learn to accept that the responsibility for everything in your life lies with you and quit blaming other people and cir-cumstances for things you don't like, you will have huge break-throughs in your life, particularly in your relationships with oth-er people and especially with women.

The most powerful way I've found for driving home the power of responsibility is a course called The Landmark Forum. The folks

STEP 2: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR EVERYTHING IN YOUR LIFE 31

from Landmark Education will slap you about the head until you get it. They will point out in no uncertain terms that you and you alone are responsible for everything in your life. Along the way, they'll give you the opportunity to get in touch with the people in your life and repair some of the damage you've been unwit-tingly doing. This workshop is run all over the planet, so there's no excuse for you not getting along to it. There is a hole in Land-mark's education because they ignore the importance of emo-tional healing, but I'll deal with that

in Part 2. Dealing with your emo-tions will prevent you getting stuck living in an endless round of their seminars. Don't worry when your friends tell you that you've joined a cult, just say “Yeah, but at least it's not Scientology!”

Stop blaming other people when things go wrong. Drop your de-fensiveness and accept responsibility for your faults and failings. Quit blaming your parents for your shitty childhood, your dom-ineering mother for crushing your self-confidence, or your inef-fective father for not being able to teach you by example to be a man. Perhaps that happened, perhaps not; it doesn't matter. Only

you are responsible for where your life is right now, and where

you want to go with it in the future. To truly understand this is a major step towards being a powerful, confident man.

What To Avoid

•Playing Victim •Saying “It's Not

Fair!” •Scientology

32

Step 3: Stop Trying To Make People Like You

The big mistake many guys make is trying to make other people like them. We self-censor what we say and do to avoid offending other people because we want them to think that we are a nice guy, and mistakenly think this will make us appealing to women. But the truth is that the more you try to make other people like you, the less they do.

Approval-seeking behavior comes across as insincere, fake, needy and desperate. Nothing repels a woman sexually like desperation and needi-ness. The survival of the species de-pends on you getting your end in, so I know how powerful this craving can be, but keep it in your pants until the time is right if you want to enjoy the feeling of having a bevy of gorgeous women around you. You will blow your chances with women every time if you come across as desperate.

Women are much more skilled than us men are at discerning a person's emotions and motives. Sure, all us guys have cravings for sex at times. Women get them too. But put that desperate craving out there for all to see, and the ladies will run a mile when they see you approaching.

What To Do

STEP 3: STOP TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU 33

A big part of the problem is that as children we got invalidated and criticized when we simply relaxed and acted naturally. At the same time, we learned ineffective ways of relating to other people and then assumed that we needed to try harder when what we were doing didn't seem to work work.

The way we learn to relate to women has its roots in the child-hood lessons we learned from our parents. Although they most likely loved you and wanted you to be happy, your parents had their own reasons for being uncomfortable with you being free to really be yourself.

To your father, your burgeoning sexuality was a threat. Each gen-eration grows stronger than the previous one as evolution pro-gresses, and unless your father was particularly insightful and confident in his own position as the man of the house he may have subconsciously encouraged you to hold back on being who you really are lest it be a threat to him. I'll talk more about your connection with him in Step 7.

Your mother probably wasn't so keen on you expressing the real you either, because in truth you are an incredibly powerful sexu-al being. When you turned from a boy into a man, the love that she felt for you all started to become a bit weird to her in a Freu-dian sort of way. So chances are she encouraged you to suppress, rather than to express, the sexual side of your masculinity. She also probably taught you to treat women with respect, and to be nice to them. She was right in a way, but you may well have taken it too far. Just being “nice” all the time gets boring to wo-men pretty quickly because it's neither very much fun nor very exciting.

STEP 3: STOP TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU 34

The more attractive a woman is to us, the nicer we often try to be around her, thinking it will get her to like us. Problem is, being nice all the time diffuses attraction and kills sexual tension.

If you've lived your whole life so far without attracting the wo-men you're interested in, there's a good chance that you've come to the conclusion that there is something wrong with you. You may well have resorted to all sorts of strategies to present a fake persona to women; one which you think will be more favorable to them than the real you. But women love guys who are real. They want the real you.

Your existing inhibitions get in the way of attracting women be-cause they prevent you from being free to be the person that you really are. When people talk about guys who have lots of “con-fidence”, what they really mean is guys who are simply comfort-able being themselves. They don't have anything you don't have; they're just not racked with inhibition and worried about what other people think of them all the time.

You may be reluctant to really speak your mind or be playful and fun around attractive women because you're afraid that you might lose or offend them. And you're right: you will probably offend and end up losing some women. But you would have lost those particular women anyway, and there are plenty more fish in the sea. When you are prepared to let go of your attachment to getting what you want from a woman and are willing to lose her, you will find yourself much more able to relax and relate to her in a way which is more fun and playful for both of you.

Trying too hard to avoid offending people just limits you to safe, boring territory where you're not particularly interesting or at-tractive; you're just like every other guy. Avoiding offending

STEP 3: STOP TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU 35

people is a defense mechanism we use to avoid having to deal with the possible pain of rejection, which I'll talk more about in Step 17

Take a long hard look at how much of the time and mental en-ergy you expend during your conversations with other people is really just focused on trying to get them to like you. Consider how often the statements you make are defensive ones intended to ensure that they don't think you're a bad person. Any time you feel the need to be defensive, stop yourself. Try throwing a fun, playful tease back at the other person or just smile mischievously instead.

Trying to make other people like us not only backfires in our re-lationships with everyone else, it also sends our brains a constant reminder that we need other people's approval all the time. We end up caught in a viscous cycle of reinforcing low self-esteem. The keys to breaking the cycle are to decide to stop rein-forcing this need by no longer seeking other people's approval, and to Learn to Love Yourself as I'll describe in Step 17.

Persistent cases of approval-seeking behavior are often indica-tions of Nice Guy Syndrome. As a recovering Nice Guy myself, I know this condition all too well. It is characterized by:

• Constantly seeking approval and validation from other people.

• Trying to make other people like you.

• Worrying too much what other people think. • Avoiding conflict.

STEP 3: STOP TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU 36

• Trying really hard not to upset people.

• Taking responsibility for other people's feelings. • Apologizing for other people's feelings of upset. • Not allowing yourself to feel or express anger. • Not asking for what you really want.

• Not speaking up for yourself. • Avoiding rejection.

• Feeling like you are never good enough.

• Believing that if you just try harder to please people, they will give you what you want without you having to ask.

• Telling people what you think they want to hear.

• Avoiding feelings of shame by not exposing thoughts, feelings or desires you think are morally unacceptable.

• Pandering to the lowest common conservative denominator. If this list resonates with you, and in particular if the thought of rejection chills you to the core, there's a good chance that you're suffering from Nice Guy Syndrome.

The bitter irony here is that many of the beliefs of the Nice Guy mindset turn out to be the complete opposite of the truth. For ex-ample, women are attracted to men who are interesting; even if they are sometimes offensive. Girls hang out with bad guys be-cause they are exciting, even if though they don't always approve of their behavior. You are much more likely to lose a woman by boring her with your fake blandness than you are by offending her.

STEP 3: STOP TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU 37

Underlying Nice Guy Syndrome is generally a web of anxiety about being your true self. Liberating yourself from this anxiety will yield massive benefits to your confidence. Anxiety is often associated with unprocessed emotional baggage, which we'll deal with in Step 12.

You don't have to be Mr Perfect to attract women; in fact, to even try is counter-productive. There is nothing wrong with the real you. Trying to get women to like you will get you slayed, it will not get you laid. So stop trying to

get people to like you, and start learning how to have fun and enjoy life without rating your success in life by whether you managed to pick up that hot blond you saw last night.

Attracting women isn't about what

you do, it's about who you are being. Who you are inside right now is just fine; you don't have to change that one iota. What you do need to do is unlearn some of the things you've been taught about the way to relate to women, and remove the inhibitions that prevent the real you from shining your light to the world. It may take some time for you to chill out to the point where your desperation is not showing. I know the goal of hooking wo-men is important to you and all, but calm down, take a deep breath and plunge into the activities I recommend in Parts 3 & 4 of this book for their own sake. Do them primarily because they are good fun, rather than because you're desperate to hook up this Saturday night. When women notice your easy-going de-meanor and feel comfortable around you, you'll start attracting

What To Avoid

•Being desperate •Trying too hard •Trying to get people

STEP 3: STOP TRYING TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU 38

more women and then others will also want to get to know you so they can find out what all the fuss is about for themselves. Love yourself and your life, develop some interests that women find appealing too and they will start flowing your way. That's what the rest of this book is all about.

39

Step 4: Quieten Your Inner Critic

“The harder you try to change your self, the stronger it [your Inner Critic] gets. Try to please it, and it will grow. The answer is to learn

how not to play … the critic game.” Hal and Sidra Stone, Embracing Your Inner Critic

Your inner critic is that voice inside your head that warns you about the impending risks and dangers of what you are doing, or what you are about to do. It's the voice that tells you “I'm not good enough, I won't get that job” when you see your dream job in the paper or “She's not going to go for a guy like me!” when you see an attractive woman at a party. So you don't apply, or you don't approach. You play life small and safe instead.

The critic is like an internalized parental voice which developed in your childhood with the purpose of protecting you from danger, rejection, or the pain of embarrassment by dissuading you from getting into “dangerous” situations. It may even sound like the voice of one of your parents. It is a carry-over from when you were younger and more vulnerable, and its original purpose was to protect you from pain. You won't have to deal with the pain of being told that you've missed out on your dream job at the interview if your critic has talked you out of even applying. And if you don't talk to the woman at the party, you don't have to face the possible pain of being brushed off or ignored by her and feeling like a loser.

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 40

However, in its motivation to avoid short-term pain, your critic can end up causing you enormous problems in the longer term. Avoiding interviews will leave you unemployed, and avoiding women will leave you single and lonely. Each of these can add up to much greater suffering than the short-term pain that your critic was trying to save you and your inner child from. As an adult it can be a right pain in the ass, so it's time for you to stop listening so intently to your inner critic.

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 41

If you had a reasonably supportive childhood where you felt en-couraged, loved and accepted for who you are, your inner critic probably gives you relatively benign messages. Like telling you “Be careful!” in social situations, “We better go to the toilet” be-fore a long trip or class, “Watch your manners” in front of roy-alty, “Don't fart!” in front of the woman at the party, or “Let's not offend this guy!” when interviewing you for that dream job. But if you grew up like I did with an overly critical parent, your

inner critic may have developed a vi-cious nasty streak, ready to attack you any time you step out and assert yourself or take any kind of risk. The problem with a critic like this is that it constantly undermines our self-esteem, causes us to avoid risks, and play it small in our life. All of these traits are the opposite of those you want in order to be confident and nothing is more likely to trigger your critic like an interaction with a wo-man that you find attractive.

Your inner critic will never go away completely, but there are some strategies that you can use to stop it from controlling your life. As you ap-ply them, you will find that the volume with which it speaks re-duces over time, and the situations in which it attacks you gradu-ally diminish. It can even become your friend and start feeding you positive messages instead of scary negative ones.

What To Do

•Learn to recognize the voice of your Inner Critic

•Thank your Inner Critic when it tries to “help”

•Start ignoring its advice

•Develop your social competence

•Read Embracing Your

Inner Critic by

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 42

The first step in dealing with a hostile inner critic is to remind yourself that the original purpose of this voice was actually to keep you safe, and stop you from straying into dangerous situ-ations. It's just that your critic's idea of “dangerous” doesn't match your current reality. Annoying as it may seem, hating your inner critic won't make it go away; it's part of you and you need to learn to love it. It is motivated by the paranoid delusions of your inner child at its most vulnerable. The more terrified it feels, the louder it will shout at you to get your attention. The more you learn to love your whole self (Step 17) including your inner critic, the softer it will become. I have found the act of loving the parts of myself like my critic that cause me so much grief a tre-mendously difficult exercise. Start by acknowledging it and pay-ing lip service to its desire to help you, by saypay-ing “Thanks!” when it attacks you, then gently remind it “But I'm an adult now, and I can handle this.”

When you see that job ad in the paper and your critic responds with “You'll never get that job!”, tell it “Thanks for the advice, but I'd rather apply anyway. I can handle it if I don't get it; and you never know what it might lead to!”. When the critic tells you “She won't be interested in you!”, say “Thanks for looking out for me; but perhaps she's attracted to overweight, balding intro-verts. I'll never know if I don't ask!”. Or whatever fits your situ-ation. It may seem fake at first, or like you're fighting a losing ar-gument with your critic, but just be firm with it and keep re-minding yourself that it's trying to help you; it's just working too hard and going about it in ineffective ways.

Another way of dealing with your critic is to become competent at doing the things that your critic tries to dissuade you from do-ing. It is motivated entirely by fear, so anything you can do

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 43

which will lessen your fear in that particular situation will also lessen the voice of your critic. When we feel competent in a given situation, we naturally feel less fearful than when we do not. I love playing music on the keyboard, and especially playing for other people; but it used to cause me so much anxiety that my critic would attack me and I'd lose where I was up to. While playing it would say “You're stuffing it up!” when I wasn't going well, or the self-fulfilling “You're about to stuff it up!” when I was. I started learning to play quite late in adulthood, and found the task daunting in itself; playing in front of other people added even more stress. I would practice a piece over and over at home for hours and hours until I could play it really well; and then fail in front of my piano teacher. The frustration of my critic attacks was overwhelming and when I asked her how to learn to play in front of other people she answered: “Practice until you know that you can do it.” It sounds simplistic, but she was right.

Competence builds confidence. When we know for sure that we can do something we're much more likely to feel confident and to succeed. We don't need so many warnings from our inner crit-ic because we have evidence that we've succeeded before, and we'll succeed again. We're less likely to even have to deal with failure because we'll encounter it less often. This is one reason why guys who are competent around women go from one suc-cess to another, while guys who aren't end up holding back to avoid the next failure. Building your social competence will boost your self-confidence, and quieten what your inner critic tells while you are relating to women. This will come naturally as you develop the way you interact with women and Learn To Flirt (Skill 2).

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 44

Your inner critic can launch attacks on you at very inopportune times. I was once in a stage production of the musical Les

Miser-ables. If you don't know the story, I recommend you check it out;

I'm yet to meet a woman who doesn't love “Les Mis”, and have fantasies about meeting a real-life Jean Valjean or Marius. On the day of the show, the director rang me to say that the guy who plays the factory foreman in Act 1 was sick, had lost his voice and couldn't sing. He asked me if I could fill in for him. I knew that without a factory foreman the show would be screwed, so although I didn't know the part, I said “Yes, I'll do it”; and set about learning the lines in the hour or so before we went on stage.

The foreman is a lecherous asshole who treats his workers ter-ribly. In the scene in question, he's just discovered that one of his workers named Fantine has a secret child. Fantine is a very pretty and rather naive girl, and the foreman is angry with her because she refuses all his sleazy sexual advances. When he finds out about the child, he explodes with rage at her. My role was to storm across the stage screaming abuse at her in song (well it's a musical after all!), singing:

I might have known the bitch would bite I might have known the cat had claws I should have guessed your little secret. Ah yes the virtuous Fantine

Who keeps herself so clean

You'd be the cause I have no doubt Of any trouble here about

You play a virgin in the light But need no urging in the night!

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 45

And with that, to throw Fantine to the ground. On the night of the performance I didn't even know which stage door I was sup-posed to go on stage from. The actors playing the other factory workers had to tell me where to go and when to walk on-stage. Then in the middle of my tirade against Fantine, with stage lights blaring, an audience of 400 people, and the orchestra playing at full-pelt, me furiously trying to remember the words I'd learned just that afternoon, and as I'm singing them this voice in my head screams “YOU'RE BEING YOUR FATHER!!! STOP!!!”.

All I could do was scream back in my head: “OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE. I'M IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING HERE, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”, as I kept singing angrily while striding across the stage towards the hapless Fantine, who I then threw to the floor violently.

Externally, the scene went off without a hitch. I managed to keep my inner critic from distracting me, and somehow remember the words in just enough time to sing them. But internally, I was a wreck. I went off-stage back to the dressing room to calm down again, my whole body shaking. My inner critic had simply re-minded me of my childhood pledge that I would never be like my father, who was sometimes violent in the frequent arguments between my parents. It doesn't know the difference between a real argument and a staged one, so it's advice was inappropriate and merely added to my on-stage stress. Whenever we are stressed out, we are more vulnerable and therefore more likely to be at the mercy of our inner critic. There are some times when we just have to tell our inner critic to shut up, because we can't deal with it right now.

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 46

If your inner critic is particularly loud and brutal, I recommend finding a facilitator to work with you using a technique called

Voice Dialogue, as described in Hal and Sidra Stone's book Embra-cing Your Inner Critic. The technique treats your personality as the product of multiple independent sub-personalities, each of which plays a role in protecting you and keeping you safe and happy. Your inner critic and your inner child are two such sub-personalities, and there are also many others. The problem is that these sub-personalities can sometimes be at war with each other because they have conflicting objectives due to different ideas about what exactly will keep you safe and happy.

In the voice dialogue process, a facilitator begins a dialogue dir-ectly with these sub-personalities to determine what it is that each of them want for you. Accessing aspects of your personality that you may not otherwise be aware of can allow you to release pent-up emotions and frustrations which could be controlling you in ways that are counter-productive. When I tried this tech-nique, I was surprised how much emotion I had bottled up in-side that no conventional therapy had managed to get to. I also got in touch with my “Rock Star”, which is the side of my per-sonality with is really playful, seductive, sexy, and fun for wo-men to be around.

Using voice dialogue to talk directly to your inner critic can en-able you to understand exactly why it is doing what it does in or-der to keep you safe. With this awareness, you will be more able to deal with its attacks because you will see that they aren't actu-ally attacks at all; they are in fact well-intentioned. Talking to your inner child about how it feels about your critic can also help you resolve the grief that you are likely to be carrying about the way that your abusive self-talk has been treating you.

STEP 4: QUIETEN YOUR INNER CRITIC 47

Sometimes the messages we get from our inner critic about ourselves are just plain frightening. They form part of a vicious cycle which keeps us fearful of going after what we want. When we're immobilized by being stuck in a cycle of fear, we stop chal-lenging these messages from our critic in the real world, and so we go on believing them to be true. Although it will initially cause our critic to voice fears that we've been avoiding, when you begin to consistently Master Your Fear (Step 15), you will learn that the scary messages it tells

you aren't true and find that over time its severity diminishes.

There is no quick-fix to a harsh in-ner critic, but greater self-aware-ness, emotional healing, improved social skills and general self-confid-ence can enable you to gradually

chip away at its ability to undermine you and release you from its grip. The division between the steps that build your mindset in Part 1 of this book, and those that build your skillset in Parts 3 & 4 is somewhat arbitrary. You will find that as you learn the skills in Parts 3 & 4, your self-confidence will grow. Each time this happens, your critic will remind you that you are taking a risk. As you do so, gently reassure it that what you're doing is OK; in fact, that it's good for you!

The voice of your inner critic will gradually become softer and less persistent as your skills develop and self-confidence grows. This will ultimately allow you to do what you want in your adult life, rather than being controlled internally by having your out-dated childhood fears continually reinforced by your critic.

What To Avoid

•Critical People

•Women who remind you of your Critical Mother

48

Step 5: Quit Worrying What Other People

Think

You cannot be free to truly be yourself if you are overly con-cerned about what other people think of you. Worrying about what other people think will stifle your creativity, suppress your instinctive masculinity and cause you to become so self-con-scious and wracked with inhibitions that women will think you're either boring, or creepy. Possibly both. If you want to be truly confident and attractive to women you need to give up caring about what they think of you.

The fear of other people's judgments of us often develops in our early childhood experiences. It's even encoded in our genes to some extent: We evolved living in tribes where each tribe mem-ber had a specific role to play in ensuring the survival of the tribe. Some became hunters, others gathers, some cared for the children while others knew how to light fires and scare away predators. This specialization gave tight-knit tribes a survival ad-vantage because each tribe member could do what they were best at.

The downside of all this was that our ancestors became highly interdependent on each other for survival and it was vital that each tribe member made a contribution. Rejection from the tribe meant they stopped feeding and protecting you, which would lead to almost certain death. As a result we developed an in-stinctive fear of rejection which predisposes us to worrying far too much about what other people think for our own good. This

STEP 5: QUIT WORRYING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK 49

is the reason why public speaking (Skill 21) causes such anxiety even though there is no physical danger involved.

Worrying about what other people think will cause you to ques-tion your every move and you'll end up looking like a robot. You can still care about how people feel; that's an innate part of being human and not something that you want to suppress. You don't want to become a psychopath. But worrying about what other people think will lead you to act out of obligation instead of

act-ing out of your deeper intuitive de-sire to be the person that you want to be.

By the time we become adults we've often had an enormous amount of practice at trying to be what we think other people want. Everything from the way we act in social situations, to the work we choose, and even to our sexual self-expression can be im-pacted by our learned behavior of questioning everything we do in or-der to ensure that we don't offend anybody. Often other people don't actually think the way we assume they do, and we end up falling for some lowest-common-denom-inator when it comes to how we behave; which explains why so many men are conservative, inhibited, risk-averse, anxious and ultimately unhappy.

We might think that we're being a “nice guy” by being so consid-erate of other people's wishes, but in fact we're being quite

What To Do

•Care how other people feel, but not what they think •Start telling yourself

“I don't give a shit what you think” as you see random strangers

•Listen to I Don't Care

What You Think by

STEP 5: QUIT WORRYING WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK 50

selfish because we're usually trying to avoid offending people so that they won't reject us. Or we're trying to passively manipulate people into treating us the way that we want, rather than us be-ing free to be ourselves and allowbe-ing people to respond to that in whatever way they wish.

Given all the practice we get at it, giving up caring what other people think can take some time and effort. Start by deciding that you're going to do it, and remind yourself that it's really im-portant. Then tell yourself “I don't care what other people think!” as you go through the day. When you encounter strangers in traffic, on the sidewalk, in the shopping mall, or just anyone you pass by, say to yourself “I don't give a shit what you think!”. Swear when you say it to yourself, just to make sure you get the point that you really don't care. They're a complete stranger, and you just don't give a damn any more what they think. If they think nice thoughts about you, you don't care. If they hate your guts, you don't care about that either. “I don't give a fuck wheth-er you like what I'm doing or not.” becomes your self-talk in-stead of “I hope this doesn't offend you”.

Learning to love yourself (Step 17) will make this much easier, because when you love yourself you're no longer dependent on other people for approval. Loving yourself is a life-long process so start giving up your concern about what other people think at the same time. This is very different to not giving a damn about other people themselves; you can still care a lot about someone without necessarily caring what they think of you or needing to agree with them all the time.

Start doing things you want to do whether you think other people will approve or not. Live your life on your terms. Part of