The thing is that I am normally not in the state of disliking myself. In my case, I actually feel neutral about myself in general.
You probably are neutral in the scheme of things, but that's not really that important as far as what people have been saying.
This is all a very fine line. I think people often assume depression, anxiety, or feelings of self hatred are easily defineable and they are not. Depressed people don't necessarily walk around going "I'm depressed". In fact I generally believe the opposite is true.
The big C is confidence, but how it manifests itself is subtle. This is why someone who has Asperger's tends to struggle, because they are unable to pick up on or sometimes express these subtleties, and instead opt for Spock-like ways of interacting. Although I sincerely believe most people who struggle with confidence do not fall into this category, although the parrallel is important because I think that they face some similar issues.
One important thing to remember is by and large how you talk about others is more or less a good metric of how you think about yourself. This goes for other people too. This is where the adage about "bullies are secretly insecure" comes from. If you badmouth others you're really indicating that you feel threatened emotionally by their presence. Same thing goes for someone who brags about themselves and has to dominate every conversation.
The first thing to remember about girls, is much like guys they think about sex and [generally speaking] are as attracted to them as you are to girls. So girls, like guys, are largely unaware of the driving force of their attractions. This is to say that girls (and guys) cannot ever fully rationalize what drives their attraction because most of it is not things that consciously enter their mind.
One of the first mistakes I see "Nice Guys" make is they think they can "second guess" what girls are attracted to. This is an immediate sign of a lack of confidence because it means that fundamentally you feel you, on your own, are incapable of being attractive (to virtually anyone).
Girls are not whimsical nymphs who try to be mysterious and misleading. Individuals maybe, but as a group, no. This is an important distinction because confidence manifests itself by giving you group appeal NOT necessarily individual appeal.
First of all confidence involves understanding a few things about humans in general. Humans have language, and language really serves no purpose if you use it to create a false sense of yourself. You shouldn't assume confidence means presenting yourself as invinicible or all-powerful. If you think you suck at Football, and someone asks you "how are you at Football" say "I suck". Conversely though if someone asks you "do you like Star Wars" say "yes I love it" but perhaps keep your fantasies about slave Leia to yourself for the moment.
Let's paint a bleak picture: you're not handsome, you're not socially graceful and you're not funny. So what? If that's your lot in life and you can't change it, so what? There's no sense in worrying about it because there are still plenty of things you can change and can control. If you try to hide these faults, like Spider-Man and Batman do every month, people will still see them AND they'll also be well aware your trying to cover them up. This is a huge turn off because no one wants that kind of emotional distress.
Honesty is really the first step towards confidence. Jerks (the type that get girls) are
honestly jerks. The
honestly believe the obnoxious sh** that comes out of their mouths. "Girls are all ****s", yes, they believe that. When they said their girl was a b**** they
honestly felt she was being one. Quite frankly, I disagree with that hypothetical person. I feel he is far to harsh on women and his hypothetical girlfriend. That's the double edged sword of confidence though.
t
. She asked me a couple days ago whether she looked ****ty on stage when she was dancing next to Too $hort and I told her that she did. I believe the word she used was "ho-ish" and I thought that was accurate. The old me might have caved and told her what everyone else was telling her was wrong and they wuz just mean ole' jerk-faces. The new me just said "yeah it was pretty ho-ish".
So it all depends on what's important to you.
