What exactly defines Confidence, and how do you get it?

[Rodeo Roadrunner]

Only recently decided to browse this subforum and noticed in a lot of the threads about incels or related issues, a common thing people say to incels is "to be confident". A lot of other discussion comes up then, as to how some people who are very successful (career/hobby wise) seemingly aren't confident, and other people who are lowlife types (criminals, people who just work lowest end job their whole life) seemingly have high confidence. A lot of the discussion revolved around whether this confidence was something you get by having sex, but others disagreed, that just having sex wouldn't magically make you more confident generally. I want to separate the question entirely from the incel issue (since there are multiple threads about incel issues already). So I am wondering, what exactly is confidence, and how do you get it? confidence doesn't necessarily seem to be correlated to life accomplishments or non-accomplishment, so it must come from somewhere else. Is it possible to lose Confidence if you once had it? Can you get it if you never had it?

Also, are self-esteem and confidence the same thing or are they different? Sometimes I see them used interchangeably, and other times it seems they are treated as separate things.

 

[Dr. Ricearoni]

Confidence is the belief you can do something, basically. It's a high level of trust except you can put it in yourself. There's multiple ways to gain it, being stupid, lying to yourself, being good at what you're doing, etc, and it's generally lost by getting your shit pushed in.

 

[Idiotron]

Confidence is best tested by how easily you can get out of a comfort zone, I think.
When you do something for many years, it becomes easy and stress free, even if it's really hard for an average person.
Try however doing something you have no clue about, especially in front of other people.
I doubt many will have the confidence.

I'm a dance teacher among other things and very few people just go for it, everyone holds back because they're embarrassed at first.
You have to work with them before they come out of their corner they chose for themselves and train with the main group.
If you're that one person who would go for it and trained with the big boys, even though you would completely suck in comparison, you have confidence.

 

[C. G. B. Spender]

I'm a dance teacher among other things

 

[urr13 account]

Having an internal sense that "no matter what I win in the end" is all confidence is, it's the ability to not sweat the small stuff and to know that it's all small stuff. This is why being a "sperg" is essentially the opposite of confidence, the unconfident has a loser mentality that no matter what they will lose so they sperg out all the time.

 

[Éamonn Ceannt]

Confidence is when you're able to handle tough social situations while sober.

Talking to a hot girl? Confidence.
Asking for a raise? Confidence.
Not accidentally being racist towards that one guy from Nigeria who works with you? Whole lot of confidence.

 

[Otis Mallebrok]

Not accidentally being racist towards that one guy from Nigeria who works with you? Whole lot of confidence.

Deliberately being racist towards the guy from Nigeria who stupidly expects you not to treat him like a runaway zoo-animal: Righteous confidence

 

[We Are The Witches]

You can put it into words however you want, and some people here have given decent definitions (in my opinion), but confidence is a feeling, and also, a lack of feelings as well.

Let's put a hypothetical example: have you ever felt that "fear", "reserved" or "cringe" feeling before doing something, because it felt daunting at some level? Like asking someone out, or doing something that you consider embarrassing, or fighting back someone physically stronger than you?

That's a combination of emotions that I'm not going to get to, but the lack of those, and furthermore, the added one that makes you truly believe you can overcome this, that you'll be OK no matter the outcome because you're strong enough to take it (not just physically, but mentally/emotionally) is how I would describe "confidence". That's what it is, a further explanation would have to describe qualia (which is a waste of time, I should have conveyed my message clear enough).

You have to be careful though, because it could cloud judgement (if you're stupid about it), there needs to be a balance between that, common sense, and proper judging skills. Being smart with this does not take away confidence away from you, it may make you look deceptively hesitant, but that's a price you'll have to pay in order to act in the best way possible (e.g: armed robbers enter the mall you're in, but you letting the police deal with it without risking your life, instead of acting by yourself, which will most likely end up in you getting shot in the guts).

How you achieve this can be done in a myriad of ways, from natural means (getting used to make semi-bold decisions, like making speeches when you have social anxiety, in order to train yourself, or trying being a theatre actor/actress as a hobby), somehow manipulating your mental state (thousands of ways to do it), to "artificial" ways (like people using drugs, being clinically insane, etc).

An example of "artificial" unhealthy volatile confidence (not an official term, but describes it adequately) is the one displayed by Charlie Zelenoff. This guy is a mentally unhealthy, drug addict that will challenge anyone and everyone to boxing matches, regardless of anything. Of course he gets beaten up, enough to even make him run for his life before one minute passes, but that inital boldness of challenging anyone, which is probably caused by his ill mental state and drugs, is an example of retarded confidence. For normal people, not even to this extreme, they'll eventually get their shit pushed in by life itself and lose this feeling (or not if they're lucky), so that's why proper judgement needs to go alongside confidence. To reiterate though, it's a feeling that translates into you very willingly confronting challenge.

---

I think differentiating between confidence and self-esteem is just being pedantic with semantics, usually unnecessary.

Self-esteem can just be "confidence in one's own worth, abilities, or morals", so that's essentially what you're talking about. However, if you want to write a trivial article about how these 2 things are different, you could just say that a difference would be that one is more general (confidence), and the other is more specific (self-esteem). So, for the latter, you could have the highest amount, yet not be confident about winning a Poker game. Your self-esteem is not challenged, no one would say that, yet you are not confident on something, in this case winning this game.

Barring this example/similar example, you can just use both terms interchangeably.

 

[Pedophobe]

As people have said, confidence often just means an absence of fear of failure. It's an expectation that if you attempt something you will probably succeed. A lot of the time that comes down to experience - knowing what to expect and developing the skills to deal with it.

If it's in regards to hitting on chicks, one trick is to practice talking to ugly girls. Women so repulsive you wouldn't touch them in the dark, if you were blind drunk, with someone else's dick. Don't flirt with them, just chat like you're having a normal conversation with a normal person. Talk about Hazbin Hotel or whatever. Be friendly and engaged, crack a few mild jokes, be yourself. Worst case* she'll be deeply disgusted by your behavior but that's fine because you're goal isn't to impress her but to study her reactions. Eventually you'll start to recognize what works and what doesn't, what gets you positive and negative responses, and you can use that knowledge to confidently approach someone you do like.

*Even worse case you'll get yourself a bunny boiling legbeard stalker but that's an entirely different set of problems.

 

[Maurice Maine]

This is how you get it.

 

[starborn427614]

Courage is a big part of it.

 

[AMHOLIO]

There's a "fake it until you make it" attitude where doing behaviors you think a confident person would do leads to confidence. Doing enough of those behaviors can lead to real confidence, where you pushed yourself to pretend to be brave and now know you don't have to be as on edge as you were before because you did it before. By pretending, you act, practice, and build it up without realizing it.
Jumping into the deep end is terrifying, but it isn't as terrifying after you do it a couple of times and floated back safely to the surface. You can be afraid of a new pool deep end, but your fear starts to go down after jumping into other deep ends. It's another pool, it just looks different than the other pool I have successfully dived into before.

The other hurdle I think is deciding not to self punish. The worst happened: you failed. Are you dead? Are you banned from somewhere? No? Then you survived and you don't need to focus on the negatives. Bad performance happens, but it doesn't mean you have to punish yourself for preforming badly or give up - it means you need to practice more. It's an active choice to reframe your failures as things that suck but you will work on rather than things that suck and you can never fix so fuck it I give up. You can feel bad for a day or two, but you can't do that forever.

Lastly, sometimes you need motivation to care. Finding something you want or want to do and doing it is powerful.



This can be negative, of course. Drug users are highly motivated to do any dangerous behavior for a hit. Some lolcows are so passionate about being lazy slobs they go out of their way to work against themselves. Find positive things to care about, find some good shrimp.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Also, are self-esteem and confidence the same thing or are they different? Sometimes I see them used interchangeably, and other times it seems they are treated as separate things.

Confidence is self assuredness. It's acting like you know what you are doing.
You get there in one of two ways. Knowing what you are doing. Not caring about the way your actions may fail. Just not caring is not the same thing. You need to do things as if they are purely reflexive as if each action is followed by the next action in a fluid motion.
To get there you need to do things. It doesn't mater if you succeed. It's all about knowing and you learn a lot from failing.
Self-esteem is caring about yourself and knowing your worth. That's a lot deeper than just try things till you get the hang of it. You need to love yourself but also need to actually know your worth. Think too highly of yourself and you will value others less and risk to little of your own skin for your own good. Think too lowly of yourself and you will put too much value in others and spend yourself on things of low value.

 

[Otterly]

The ability to execute an action or series of actions without being hindered by second guessing to the point it affects the execution. You either are like that because you’re an idiot who doesn’t understand the consequences or you’re wise because you’ve learned what can happen and understand it and can deal with it.

And rather like wisdom, one gets there by fucking up and learning from it.
Wisdom is the result of learning, learning is the result of experience, experience is the result of error and reflection.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Confidence is the sense people use it, in that context, is just delusional wishful thinking and irrational positivity, so you shouldn't want that. If you do want it then do something like huffing gasoline to lower your brain function, it'll come naturally.

The proper understanding of confidence is the opposite, not wishful thinking but impartial evaluation and rational calculation of value. Having confidence in your physical strength means nothing unless you're actually strong, otherwise you're not lifting shit on happy thoughts. You can be confident in your ability to lift if you know you really are strong enough to. Same for appearance, you can be confident in your ability to pull chicks if you know you really are attractive enough to.

 

[Sparkletor 2.0]

I don't know what confidence is but I apparently betrayed it when I told Mom and Dad about Uncle Bill's tickle time.

 

[Brightstar777]

positive thinking regardless of the outcome

 

[conodont]

Confidence is how you think of your abilities. There are two ways to be confident:

1. Succeed in life. Get good at something. Do something productive. Get friends. Make yourself talented in an area.
2. Delusion. Far more common, blame everything on other people, surround yourself with enablers, and stay in your house all day.

 

[Großmann]

-what exactly is confidence?
Confidence is one’s faith in his abilities.

-and how do you get it?
By becoming competent. Confident speakers are competent speakers. Confident drivers are competent drivers. Etc. There are exceptions to this, such as narcissists that project confidence with no competence to back it up, but this isn’t something you can just fake.

-confidence doesn't necessarily seem to be correlated to life accomplishments or non-accomplishment
Not true. Again, with the exception of narcissists, people are not usually confident about things they don’t know or have practice doing. Life accomplishments (I assume you mean things like earning educational degrees and certifications, job promotions, getting married, having children, etc) feed into confidence because it generally takes a level of competence to achieve these things.

-Is it possible to lose Confidence if you once had it?
Yes. You can think you are awesome at something and then lose your confidence once your demonstrated competence is shown to be lacking.

-Can you get it if you never had it?
Yes, by building competence.

 

[Rodeo Roadrunner]

Confidence is best tested by how easily you can get out of a comfort zone, I think

That's a combination of emotions that I'm not going to get to, but the lack of those, and furthermore, the added one that makes you truly believe you can overcome this, that you'll be OK no matter the outcome because you're strong enough to take it (not just physically, but mentally/emotionally) is how I would describe "confidence".

go where women are

These seem to be the closest to what makes sense to me. I do think that self-esteem and confidence are separate, but closely aligned.

-what exactly is confidence?
Confidence is one’s faith in his abilities.

The only reason I (partly) disagree with this is I knew a physics major in college who was someone you could describe as not being confident. Quiet, didn't contribute much to general conversation. But when it came to anything related to physics he was all over it, eager to share his knowledge and teach people about the subject. Not in a condescending way either, you could just tell that he really cared about physics and wanted to share that knowledge with people who were curious. So he was confident when it came to anything related to physics, but generally people wouldn't describe him as confident when non-physics subjects were discussed.

This is where perhaps self-esteem being a separate quality from confidence comes in. Maybe he suffered from self-esteem issues that caused him to be timid generally, but this was overcome on occasions where his confidence in his own abilities and knowledge was high, ie physics.