How does one become confident, not insecure?

[Beec]

Anyone who is familiar with my posts while know that I have more than occasionally told people to act aloof, as an opposite of needy and clingy. Someone I have become familiar with because of this forum asked me today about what "aloof" meant. As I use it, it does not simply mean indifferent, as in one simply not caring. One will not have a decent relationship with anyone who they appear to not care about or who they really do not care at all about. By aloof, I have simply meant that ones emotions are not easily influenced by the conduct of others. When someone smiles at you or does something nice, the aloof person can smile back and thank them. However, the aloof person's emotions should not just soar, the person does not gush about how wonderful, sweet, nice or meaningful such an act was or could have been.

 

Not sure if this is all related to my basic topic, but by acting aloof, I thought one always seemed to be slightly more confident, more secure. More times than not, the problems I've read about and seen in relationships arise when a breakdown has occurred in someone feeling either insecure or not confident. The other big alternative issues I've seen is someone acting with a lack of either courage or selflessness. By selflessness on must understand doing something nice for someone can at times not be selfless, and in particular when it is done to get them to do something for you, in which case it is not selfless at all. Doing something nice so someone will like you is not selfless, and it is also not confident, secure or courageous.

 

But insecurities seem to hamper more people in love and relationships than anything else. People get needy and clingy or passive aggressive and place stress on their relationships. This stress would be lessened greatly if the person was capable of acting for as if they were not insecure, and often my suggested actions are intended to create such an atmosphere. But the problems in many relationships would simply disappear if people were secure.

 

I think that if one acts secure and confident AND it works, then that acting can lead to one feeling secure and confident, and if done for a while, one might even be secure and confident. However, I know darn well that for some it simply does not work that way. The insecurities come up again and again and place stres on relationship after relationship, and person after person that they love gets driven away.

 

So, the real point of this long post is to ask others what they have done to improve their confidence, reduce their insecurities, to become a secure person, capable of living a life of courage and selflessness? Please, let us know, because this is the problem at the root of many problems.

[hosswhispra]

So, the real point of this long post is to ask others what they have done to improve their confidence, reduce their insecurities, to become a secure person, capable of living a life of courage and selflessness? Please, let us know, because this is the problem at the root of many problems.

 

I guess I would say that by actually not caring anymore has helped me; and realizing that it is selfish to expect one person to fulfill all my needs. That's an impossible and insurmountable expectation to be bestowed upon only one person. Coming to those realizations has made me secure within myself. It was a gradual process and I am glad I have finally arrived at that point.

[FortunateOne]

To be confident is to have self esteem. Self esteem is what we all seek, yet we need to understand the fine line between confidence and narcissism or confidence and submissiveness. As Hoss said one can be uncaring about things, but this attitude will leave an unanswered void that will grow with time, which is what you seem to feel at the moment. This is how we prove ourselves to others. Guess who we hurt the most with this uncontrolled behavour? Ourself. Why? We have to mentally prove us to us. This may even manifest a lot of perfectionism in our demands and expectations which extend to others.

 

The way I over came the void is to deeply ask myself why or what happened to my self confidence as a child. This lead to me admitting that I was in denial about many things in my childhood. Once I acknowledged these issues in a healthy psychological manner I was able to understand what it really means to be emotionally intelligent and become a positively healthy man in my life. Trust me, this shines through to women since now I get a lot of attention thanks to the new attitude. With this new attitude I now seek healthy relationships based on positive human traits and emotional intelligent decisions. It's a tough transition, but if I can do it so can anyone else.

[Weeblie]

I'm not a confident person overall, but I've had moments. I think that during those times, two things were consistent. I was happy and I stopped caring about what other people would think about me.

 

Whenever I'm geniunely happy, I can't control my actions. I'll smile at everyone and joke around. I don't think about how I'm acting or what I'm saying. I'm just relaxed and having a good time. Unfortunately, usually whenever I'm that happy it's because I met some guy or something exciting and fabulous has happened to me.

[annie24]

That is something I admire about cats. They are so aloof. If you feed them, they like you, but they don't NEED you, and everyone knows that. They are very mysterious with their comings and goings. They have extremely high self-esteem. I bet they sit around all day thinking about how great they are. It is like that quote goes, "Cats used to be worshipped as Gods in ancient Egypt. And they have never forgotten that."

 

I think we could all take a few lessons from cats.