Are you confident or just faking?
Personal growth techniques that help you increase confidence and charisma without healing at the core are kinda fucked up
They promote a superficial, nice image-centered, perfect rhetoric-centered world and connections where one is now more busy trying to be confident than actually just being it
These gurus and techniques tell the typical, robotic story that from a specific body position or tone of voice or magical sequence of gestures – one can now unlock unlimited confidence and is collectively assessed as confident or not
Absolute garbage. I’ve fallen for this trap. Many years ago I rememeber when I used to “try and be confident”
The internal motivator for acting in a specific “confident way” was to mimic as much as possible an idealized confident, charismatic version of myself or a “confident person”
I was actually feeling worse – my inner world was a mess and chaotic, didn’t know who I was
I was more worried with looking, appearing, convincing myself and trying so hard – than actually being
At that time I called it “communicational perfectionism”
One day I was able to finally formulate what was actually happening
I realized I was trying to super-impose an ideal, personality of confidence and charisma on top of unhealed foundations
The hyper-focus on perfecting the delivery of a word, getting tonalities and gestures right, so as to elicit a “that person is now convinced / impressed” response in the other person – was actually an elaborate defense mechanism and escape from unhealed pain
As deep down I was actually, still very concerned about judgement – outwardly I was doing my best to deny so
I realized that I needed to seriously explore what I was escaping from
It’s only then that I realized, confidence is a natural state of being that ensues when this escaped pain has been healed
Confidence is not achieved, it’s not described, it’s not thought, does not care about external appearance – it just is the silent background that remains
One is now free to move, free to be whoever they want, because now confidence does not depend on forms, symbols, techniques, gestures or elaborate, perfectionist rhetoric