Positive thinking <> mental masturbation

The author of the article obviously confused between positive thinking and mental masturbation. Dreaming about desired future and doing nothing to materialize your dream is what I call mental masturbation, on the other hand, when you are in doubt, when you are facing adversity in life, when you are experiencing setback in your effort, you don't let them destroy you and instead believe that you can overcome those obstacles, that's what I call positive thinking. This article is definitely misleading in my opinion, but it's interesting to read anyways.

Commonality among insecure and not confident characteristics

Insecure and not confident characteristics aren't always obvious and should not be confused with simply being nervous. Nervousness is nothing more than an emotion and we all get that, insecurity and lack of self-confidence however, is a mindset that will manifest in every aspect of your life. Here are some typical characteristic of insecurity.

1. Overreacting to others. This person does not take other's opinion very well and will tend to get defensive or even overreact by turning into an argument. At this moment, this person is no longer listening. The common reason this person acts this way can be because this person perceives other's difference as a challenge to his or her ego and will actively defend it, or this person maybe being deceptive or have agenda that doesn't want others to know, hence will perceive other's difference as a threat of exposing the agenda and will actively convince others to think differently

2. Being overly negatively sensitive to others. This person takes everything way too personally. This person is very good at turning simple everyday occurrence into negativity. If others don't smile at this person, it is a signal of personal rejection; If good things happen to others around, this person gets jealous and will feel bitter about it. The reason this person is so negatively sensitive about others is possibly that this person doesn't think very highly of himself or herself, so this person is looking externally for validation and if that validation can't be found, it will be turned into invalidation and thus become personal

3. Being too calculating. This person values dollars more than anything else, including the relationship with you. You will be surprised to see a lot of people that have decent earnings are still very calculating when it comes to money. I come across with a lot of these type of people in real estate as clients. They will go through everything and find flaws about the property and your service and request for less commissions or more rebates, which in many cases are no more than just a few hundred bucks, even if it means they will rather lose this great deal and when it does, they almost always will regret after a few years when they see that property appreciates $100K. This type of people will spend countless hours doing their own complicated personal income tax filing on their own instead of saving those time to let CPA do it for them because it costs too much. These type of people will always tell you about great startup ideas and great success stories, but when it comes to actually doing it, they WILL NOT invest a penny. These type of people are normally making decent enough money doing what they don't love while being scared to lose everything, they don't believe in themselves and will rather take all the bullshit from work just to keep the job security. Bottom-line, this person will not rock the boat and stand up for themselves or others unless everything is free.

4. The obvious fashion maniac. These people are very common, they earn $4000 per month and will spend $5000 per month on the latest fashion, cars and makeups. They have no personal interests other than taking cool selfies and posing for the camera at nightclubs. They are superficial and boring that they almost have nothing interesting to talk about rather than celebrity gossips and other incomplete anecdotes. The reason why these type of people are insecure is obvious. They don't know their self-worth and therefore are only relying on looks and material possessions to gain admiration or just simple acceptance from others.  

5. The people that are trying too hard to alter their physical attributes, cultural backgrounds or social status. These type of people can be spending a lot of money on penis enlargement products or boob jobs. Or this person can be denying his or her own cultural heritage by being self-racist. There is a sizable portion of the Asian populations that are typical of being self-racist. Or this person can be seen in every local events shaking hands with local celebrities and want to be seen by others doing so just to project the false image of being part of a socially exclusive club. Again, these type of people are basing their confidence on the external reactions.

6. Haters. For obvious reasons, these people rather spend time hating on others than to do something for themselves. The above-mentioned 1, 2 type can easily fall into hater category, except that haters get their confidence by putting other's down. Again, this is a very external source of confidence, which is false confidence. 

7. The people that demands immediate returns on everything they invest or offer. This person has similar mentality as number 3. If this person invest 5 dollars, he or she needs to see return immediately. This person doesn't understand that in order to harvest fruits, you have to plant seeds and irrigate your plants for months if not years first. In other words, if you want the glory, you need to put in your work. This type of people will take Karate lessons and quit after 2 months because they are still whitebelts; they will quit doing their projects after a few weeks because it is not making money; they will only offer to buy you a lunch if they think you will promise to offer them a job at the end of the lunch; they will buy women flowers only if they think they will get laid on the same date. The list goes on and on. Again, this person values money more than anything else and doesn't really believe in his own self-worth nor has enough dedications and discipline to make things work. 

The list goes on and on, which characteristic do you think you have? If you were like me, you would have all of them, because it is not hard to see that the characteristic of insecurity will manifest in every aspect of your life, whether you are more number 1,2 and less 3,4 or not, it is purely your personal style, but it root of confidence issue is the same.

The source of confidence

Having talked about self-confidence previously, you would wonder that how can you become confident in very situation? How can you be a confident person and how come it is so hard to be confident in certain situations?

Because we get into that, we first need to understand that there is always a reason why you choose to let your natural confidence come out sometimes but not other times. This reason is what most of those self-help gurus refer to as the source of confidence. 

So what is your source of confidence?

For most people, confidence come from the feeling of personal security. If you feel secured, knowing that you are all taken care of and nobody or nothing can touch you, you always get your way, then you are confident as long as that security continues to be in place. Therefore, you know why you are confident in front of your best friends because you know they are not going to reject you; you know why you are confident in front of your subordinates because they are going to listen to you; you are confident around those who are physically weaker than you because you know they can't physically harm you and the list goes on. 

What about the situations when you don't feel the feeling of personal security? Here are some typical situations for the most.

1. You just had a few drinks and you got pulled over by a cop

2. You have had a crush on your classmate/teammate for a while but don't have the encourage to let that person know, with that context you are in an interaction with that person

3. You are in your boss's office and your boss doesn't look happy

4. You are a white belt in your local karate Dojo and your sparring partner is a blackbelt who looks pretty mean.

5. You are selling real estate/cars/business productions and you are really desperate to make a sale and here is your customer who doesn't seem to be overly excited about your product

6. When you are trying to cover something up 

7. When you are present with legit physical threats

Looking at the above list what commonality do you see that is the cause of not having personal security?

It is not too hard to see that our feeling of personal security depends almost always on external environments: you don't feel secure when you are worrying that other person may not like you if you make a mistake, or you are trying to lie and are afraid that person finds out or when you are exposed to physical dangers. 

In other words, our source of confidence are based on external outcomes: the reaction from others, or physical danger that you know you can't handle.

There is nothing you can do about physical dangers, you will feel frightened because it is an indication of your mind and body to tell you to remove yourself from that danger and save your life, it better be working. 

The confidence based on the reaction of others is false  on the other hand. You are not confident (an attribute to yourself) as long as your confidence is based on the ever-changing and uncontrollable external reaction. 

So in all of those situations when you feel insecure, do you recognize the reason why you are such way?

The truth about self confidence

Ever wonder how you can be more confident in yourself? Ever wonder how come some people just have rock solid confidence while you don't? Do you ever doubt yourself, criticize yourself or beat yourself down because you think you are not good enough? Trust me, I have been there. I have been very insecure, shy and judgmental when I was a child and I always wonder how come things happened to me the way it does. 

Like fish doesn't see water, a man doesn't see himself. It took me years and years of hard-work and receiving hard blows from life for me to gain better understanding about life, myself and the so-call self-confidence. Surprisingly, it is not that hard to become confident and you will one day realize (hopefully) that the true confidence is always within you, it never gets created nor destroyed. Only you choose to let it come out or cover it up.  

If you want to see examples of what I am talking about, take a look at your entire life or the lives around you. Are you always confident (or weak), or you are only confident during certain situations and not so confident in certain situations? What about your friends, your parents, your teacher or even your boss? 

The truth of the matter is that every psychologically normal person is the same way. We are confident sometimes and not so confident some other times. If you deem yourself lacking confidence, you are assigning an attribute to yourself, in order for this statement to be true, it has to be an attribute of yourself which is more permanent. Such attribute can be 'I am a male', 'I hate swimming', 'I am afraid of height', 'I am short', 'I am broke' and so on. If 'I am not confident' is an attribute like you mean to assign it to yourself, then you have to be 'not confident' throughout your day, regardless who you are dealing with and where you are until you fix 'I am not confident' however. Obviously, this is not true for most of us. Unlike 'I am fat', which is true throughout the time until you have to personally do something to not be fat, 'I am not confident' is not true all the time, it all depends on what the situation is.

Therefore, instead of telling yourself  'I am just not a confident person', you should rephrase it to something like this 'Somehow I don't feel confident being around Sally, My boss or police offers'. This conveys a very subtle message to your subconscious that you are not lacking confidence, you are not a less worthy person, you are just simply feeling nervous around certain situation and you will trust that you will get over with it later and you have seen countless examples of how people are nervous initially but loosen up once the ice is broken. 

Change the way of seeing yourself, the way you define yourself, everything else in your world starts to shift.