Introduction: 

Why Self-Confidence Changes Everything

If you could enhance a single trait about yourself with the objective of improving your success, your happiness and your effectiveness, what would it be?

Your intelligence? 

Your empathy?

Your height?

I’m here to tell you that 99% of the time, you’d get the best results by enhancing your confidence.

In other words, all those self-help books that tell you to take supplements to make yourself smarter, to work out more, or to stick a lump of butter in your coffee are barking up the wrong tree. With self-confidence, you can genuinely accomplish anything.

No, Really

This might seem like the kind of advice you get from a poster with someone punching their fist into the air in front of a sunset. It might sound like the sort of thing that your mother would say to you but which you suspect she may not really mean.

But it’s true. Self-confidence really does change the way you approach every situation, the way that others see you and the way that you come out of every interaction.

How?

Well, let’s start with a little bit of evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary psychology and theory in general, essentially tells us that all of our behavior and all of our traits have been ‘selected’. In other words, your ancestors all managed to survive in order to pass on their DNA and create you because they had traits that helped them to survive. Your great, great, great, great, great Uncle Jimmy though died out because he had traits that didn’t help him survive. And those did not get passed on to you.

What does this have to do with confidence?

Well, it comes down to the crucial importance of social interactions. That is to say that human beings are naturally social animals. We are pack animals just like dogs or wolves, although a human ‘pack’ is actually known as a tribe.

Being a member of a tribe would have helped us to survive by giving us strength in numbers, access to potential mates, greater resources etc. Those members of the tribe that would get

ostracized and left out in the cold would end up dying out as a result of less access to food and resources and less protection from predators.

So maybe Uncle Jimmy died out because he was unsocial and he got evicted from his group. Survival at least partly comes down to a popularity contest. Think of it a little bit like Big Brother!

But social success is not just a binary matter. It is not a case of being accepted into the group or not being accepted. It’s also true that you can exist within that group at different levels. So, you have your alphas and your queens. These are the individuals that rise to the top of the ladder and which command the most respect. They are generally physically more intimidating, they are generally more intelligent and they are generally ‘wealthier in terms of what they have access to.

These alphas get their choice of mate, they get first pickings when it comes to food and they get to sleep on the most comfortable pile of hay in the cave.

Point is, that being alpha means you are more likely than anyone else to survive and to thrive even more so. If you are an omega, if you are the jester of the group, then you don’t get fed as well and you become much more likely to get killed when you go out hunting and gathering.

So, how do you ensure that this doesn’t happen to you?

What’s more, is that the alpha of the group or those that are higher up in the pecking order, will get access to the best mates. And I am talking strictly objectively here. These are the best

mates in terms of their genetic potential (which, by the way, is how we decide who we find most attractive).

If you are an alpha male, then you can offer better genetics, more resources and more safety for your offspring. And this is why women find you more attractive.

Likewise, if you are the alpha female, the same thing goes. You are the envy of every man, and this sends out a powerful social signal that lets you have your pick of the men.

And guess what? Nothing has changed. We might consider ourselves to be more civilized and advanced today. But the reality is that we are still operating by precisely the same rules.

Women find men attractive who are:

• Physically strong (good genetic material, good protection)
• Funny (intelligent – good genetic material, socially in-tune)
• Intelligent (good genetic material)
• Stylish (wealthy and socially in-tune, good social standing)
• Wealth (good protection/provisions)
• Masculine (good genetic material, good protection)
• Kind, generous (socially in-tune, good social standing) Men find women attractive who are:
• Physically attractive (good genetic material)
• Conventionally attractive (social signal that they are ‘in- demand’)
• Funny (intelligent – good genetic material, socially in-tune)
• Stylish (wealthy and socially in-tune, good social standing)
• Well presented (this is a trick that enhances their apparent genetic material)
• Kind, generous (socially in-tune, good social standing)

As you can see, all of the traits that we look for in a partner ultimately boil down to directly enhancing the strength and resources of ourselves and our offspring, while also climbing the social ranks in order to ensure better access to resources in both cases.

And the same thing even happens when we choose friends. We are naturally drawn to people who are generous and friendly because they can help to provide us with more resources. And at the same time, we are also drawn to people who are alphas – because by associating ourselves with those people, we can thereby raise our own social status and thus our own access to mates and resources.

Now here’s the other thing. Human beings are naturally inclined to try and make decisions about people quickly and on a snap-basis. This is also a trait that has strong survival value. If someone approaches you in a dark alley and you take a ‘don’t judge a book by its cover approach), then there is a very good chance you’ll be mugged and no-one will ever know what an open-minded individual you were.

On the other hand, if you take the stance that ‘they look scary, they are scary’, then you will run and survive to be prejudiced another day. Unfortunately, this trait leads to a lot of other problems today. But that is outside the scope of this book for sure! (We’re not here to right social injustice, sadly!)

This happens when it comes to social interactions too. When we meet someone in a bar, we very quickly need to decide whether

we want to spend time talking to them or not. Are they worth our time?

And finally, this is where we get to the power of confidence.

When we see someone who is confident. When we see someone who can walk into a room and command positive attention and success. When we meet someone who is well dressed and attractive… all these things make us presume that they are more alpha.

Why? Because someone who is highly confident it is safe to assume must have a reason to be confident. If someone is confident to tell jokes, to be confrontational, to act like themselves without feeling the need to ‘fit in’ and change their behavior… then the assumption will always be that there is a reason they are so confident. The assumption is that they must be alpha, they must be good genetic material, or they must be wealthy.

Whatever the case, that confidence buys the individual instant respect. It makes them more attractive in a sexual way but it also makes them a natural leader, it makes them someone that we feel able to put our trust in and it makes them someone that we want to associate with ourselves.

In short, by being confident, you become someone who is more appealing in every way on an unconscious way.

There are more ways that confidence makes us more potent and effective, but we’ll address those points as we go.

Just know that confidence will improve your:

• Sex life
• Relationships
• Career
• Happiness
• Wealth
• Success
• Business endeavors
• Personal development And much more!

Chapter 1: Defining Confidence

So, with that in mind, it’s time that we set out to boost your confidence and start giving you that social edge that will make other people instantly look up to you and treat you with respect.

And the way we start to do that is by better defining the goal and the end point. We can’t reach a destination before we know exactly where it is that we’re going.

And so with that in mind… what is confidence? What does it look like?

In the truest sense, confidence is belief in yourself and a lack of

anxiety. We’re talking principally about ‘self-confidence’, though of course you can also be ‘confident’ in other things.

Self-confidence has many facets itself too though. Self-confidence means that you are confident in yourself, that you like yourself

and that you don’t wish that you could change some fundamental and underlying aspect of yourself.

This is self-esteem, and self-esteem is certainly incorporated into the concept of self-confidence. Self-confidence though more precisely focusses on your confidence in your own actions and decisions. Self confidence requires self-esteem, because self- esteem means that you trust yourself to make good decisions and to do the right thing. That gives you the self-confidence you need to trust in those decisions when you make them and to see them through.

So, let’s imagine a situation. You are among some colleagues at work and there are some very loud characters there. Maybe the CEO is there. Maybe your direct boss is there. Maybe someone you fancy is there.

Everyone is planning on making a decision that you think is the wrong decision. You have a hunch that it could lose the company millions.

And so, you speak up and you course correct. You tell the group that if they go ahead with their plan, they will most certainly end up losing a lot of money.

That is self-confidence. Here, you are confident enough in your decision to speak up and to go against the grain. You are confident enough to confront your boss and someone who has many more resources than you. You are confident enough to put yourself out on a limb and to potentially take the consequences if it comes to that.

And guess what? You just made yourself incredibly sexy to that colleague you fancy. And you caught the attention of your boss and the CEO because you now look like someone who must have a lot of insight and faith in themselves. You are not a yes man or woman. You are someone who is able to take charge.

But someone with a lack of self-confidence will sit quietly. That’s because they will suspect that their idea is wrong. They will worry that if they speak up, they’ll actually influence a decision that will end up badly damaging the company’s finances for that year. You worry that if you speak up, you’ll stutter and you’ll get told to be quiet. Worse, no one will listen to you. And that colleague you fancy will be turned right off of you. And you’ll be fired.

You lack the confidence of your convictions. And so you sit quietly by and miss your opportunity to climb the social ranks.

The Subtle Difference

Okay you think. So that means that all you need to do is to speak up about everything, all the time. Right?

Be confrontational, put yourself out there, contradict people…

Just generally shout loudest and make yourself known right? That will make you someone who is highly extraverted and someone who commands respect and demonstrates that they aren’t shy.

STOP.

That is not confidence. That is overcompensation. And it is actually one of the biggest mistakes you can make. It comes across as ‘misguided’ confidence.

We all know what an unconfident person looks like. They are the wallflower. They dress to hide their figure, they sit quietly in the corner, they don’t make eye contact when they talk and they agree with whatever you say. They probably got bullied at school, seeing as they stand out as a socially ‘easy target’.

But don’t oversimplify matters. Quite does not mean shy. Quiet does not mean low in confidence.

In fact, some of the most confident people in the world are highly quiet. You know that type too. These are the people who sit quietly on the sidelines observing. They don’t say much, but when they do speak, people listen. They are reserved. Controlled.

Confident. Stoic. Nothing ever seems to phase them.

Then you have the opposite: the loud-mouth who isn’t confident, just socially inept. They talk loudly and aren’t shy to speak their mind – but that just comes down to the fact that they don’t pick up on the social cues like eyes-rolling and people awkwardly shuffling away from them.

I remember a guy I went to karate with who would always hold his arm out and make this noise when he punched then look you in the eye as though to say, ‘that’s right, bitch’. He wouldn’t take part in the exercises properly and would often say things like ‘don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you’. Unfortunately, the guy was also about the least coordinated person I’ve ever known. He was not at all physically intimidating and his playing around was just embarrassing and cringe worthy. He had a kind of confidence, but that only came from being completely un-aware of himself and of social cues. He had no idea that people avoided partnering up with him, or that people joked about him behind his back.

Likewise, we’ve all known people in the workplace who challenge everything we say, who talk up for the sake of talking up, and who in short just have ‘little man’ syndrome.

These people are over compensating.

Some people will even confuse aggression and cruelty with confidence. They subscribe to the notion that it is ‘eat or be eaten’. They think they need to put others down, to tease them physically, to shout at them – as that way it won’t happen to them.

You get women who want to make sure every knows just how confident they are, and they do that by wearing the smallest skirts possible, tons of makeup and incredibly low cut tops… all at the same time. Oh, and their clothes are also covered in sequins.

So, you mustn’t shrink away from people and be shy to ever speak up. But you also shouldn’t shout and be loud and try to show off how dominant and alpha you are.

So, what the heck are you supposed to do?

Be Kind, Be Yourself

The answer is simple: you be yourself.

Again, this sounds like your Mum’s advice. But I mean that you need to really be yourself.

When I was at school, I was pretty confident. I was confident because I was disinterested in what other kids thought. The other kids at school, to me, were a distraction. I had friends outside of school from karate and from my previous school. And anyway, I

was much more interested in training. I was obsessed with physical fitness as a kid and my objective was to be the next Jackie Chan. I spent my evenings doing pull ups and learning to back flip and then having drinks after class with those mates.

So, when I was at school, I just didn’t have that crucial incentive to try and impress everyone and to fit in.

I also used to love comic books. Comic heroes were right in- keeping with my general interest in fitness and physical performance. I was training to be like Superman.

Now comics are generally considered pretty nerdy. They are considered socially taboo – for whatever reason – and people will often pick on people who read comics.

I remember a boy at our school used to try and be cool. Then one day, his backpack fell open and a ton of Spider-Man comics fell

out. He protested that they weren’t his, but the teasing began and of course no one believed him. People teased him and he looked on the verge of tears and swore they weren’t his.

So, passing by, I did something I’m not terribly proud of. I said:

“Well, if they’re not yours and you don’t know how they got there… can I have them? I love Spider-Man!”

And he said yes. And all the kids who were teasing him, thought that was hilarious. And I would openly read comics in class on a regular basis and no one ever teased me for it.

Why? Because I owned it. And that’s the only difference. I wasn’t shy of it.

And you’ll see this if you check out YouTube, or in your interactions in the real world. There are plenty of people who love comic books and popular culture but they manage to make it look cool. A bunch of guys who go to my gym wear Dragon Ball Z t- shirts but no one would ever call them ‘nerdy’!

Likewise, when I admitted to someone the other day that I wasn’t much of a fan of Star Wars, they made me feel like I was the weird one! They made me feel like I was uncool. Why? Because their love of Star Wars was so genuine and relaxed that they made it seem cool.

Liking comics isn’t uncool. Liking comics is uncool if:

1. You are obsessive about it and you miss social cues – that means that you end up awkwardly talking about it too much to people who aren’t interested, dressing up like characters in out of context settings in a way that’s a little creepy etc.
2. You are very awkward and shy about You deny it, try to hide it or apologize for it.

The same goes for anything.

So, what are we concluding here? We’re concluding that at the very core of self-confidence is being true to yourself. It means doing what you think, saying what you think, speaking your mind, acting the way you want to and dressing the way you want to.

You NEED to pick up on social cues. That means being polite, considerate and appropriate. It means not standing too close, or talking too loud (and this is what the slightly socially inept sometimes miss).

But you should also be completely yourself. Don’t hide any aspect of yourself and likewise don’t exaggerate any aspect of yourself in order to try and seem cooler.

Because this is the big mistake that the loud people make: they are overcompensating for what we can only assume is a lack of confidence. When someone speaks very loudly because they’re trying hard not to seem shy or passive, they end up looking desperate.

If you are really confident, it means that you don’t need to win the approval of others.

If other people feel that you aren’t trying to win their approval, then they will unconsciously make the assumption that you have a reason to be so confident. YOU must be the alpha. If you’re not trying to impress them, you must believe yourself to be higher in the social ranking than them. And if you think that, then you must have a reason to think it. And they must therefore be lower in the social ranking.

By being relaxed and cool and completely yourself, you will inspire others.

Kindness and Generosity

And actually, kindness and generosity is one of the most powerful ways to boost your confidence. That means building other people up, it means sharing your resources, it means smiling in a way

that is genuine…

This is all incredibly important, because it creates a picture of you as someone who is able to be kind and generous. If you’re being

purposefully confrontational and aggressive, it comes across that you are defensive, which makes you seem weak.

If you build other people up, then you appear confident because it looks as though you aren’t threatened by them in any way.

If you give people things, it makes you seem as though you have a wealth of resources and thus are able to share.

If you genuinely have nothing to hide and no reason to feel threatened, then there is no reason not to be kind, generous and open. And that’s incredibly impressive to many people.

Chapter 2: The Decisive Action-Taker

Remember, we defined the difference between self-esteem and self-confidence as being the emphasis on action taking.

People who are self-confident are confident in their actions and decisions. They take action, speak up and put themselves out

there. This requires self-esteem, but they are not the exact same thing.

Being able to decisively take action, to have faith in your own decisions and not to hesitate. That is one of the things that makes you appear

But the problem is that one does not always equate to the other. You can be very happy with who you are and happy with your own company, but at the same time you might still be indecisive and hesitant to take action.

Why does this happen?

Overcoming Risk Aversion

The problem is that humans are naturally risk averse. This means that we are more motivated by the fear of loss than we are by the promise of reward. So in other words, if someone offered for you to invest $10 and there was a 60% chance you would win $50 and a 40% chance you would lose and not get your $10 back, a lot of people wouldn’t invest.

In this scenario, investing is clearly the wise choice. This is statistically the best option and if you kept doing it, you would be almost guaranteed to be in profit in the long term.

But many of us wouldn’t because we are afraid of risk.

Again, this is a trait that has evolved over many years. It makes logical sense for us to be risk averse. Why? Because it prevents us from taking chances that could immediately eliminate us. Being risk averse means that we won’t take the chance of sneaking past

that bear to get the berries. And that’s probably, on the whole, a good shout.

But this same psychology and biology still influences us in the real world. It still influences everything we do. And even when the risk isn’t physically threatening, it’s still very real.

You still need to weigh up the pros and cons whether you’re thinking of talking in public, or asking that guy/girl out on a date.

Let’s reassess that situation that we discussed earlier: the scenario where you have the option to speak up in the board room and point out that the management is about to make a terrible mistake.

You are now going to weigh up the pros and cons. You’ll look at what you stand to gain and what you stand to lose by speaking up.

On the one hand:

• You might prevent the company from losing millions
• You could impress your colleagues
• You could impress the colleague you fancy
• It could lead to a promotion But on the other hand:
• It could all go wrong and the company could lose the money
• Now it would be your fault
• You might lose your chance of a promotion
• Your peers might be angry with you or upset
• There’s a chance no one will listen to you, making you look weak and ineffectual
• People might laugh at you
• You might get fired Shit, better keep quiet!

In other scenarios, we also make similar judgement calls. Even when this is less obvious.

For example, you might find yourself in a situation where you need to decide what to get for dinner. You go to the shops and you can’t quite decide, so you call your partner and ask them.

And now you look weak and ineffectual. You look like someone who can’t even decide what to eat for dinner!

But the reality was that you just wanted to make sure you would pick something that your partner would enjoy. Your motives were honorable but now you just look lame.

The same thing happens when you can’t decide what game to play, whether to go on a night out or not… indecision just makes you look wet.

And again, the same thing happens if you are in a situation where you need to act quickly. Your friend is choking! Do you try the Heimlich maneuver? Do you call the ambulance? Do you pat them hard on the back?

Or do you stand there, frozen in indecision, until someone else steps up and takes charge as leader of the group? Or do you all just watch until the friend chokes to death, staring at you through wide eyes and asking without words ‘why???’.

Social Pressure and Diffusion of Responsibility

This might sound a little farcical (and sure, I hammed it up), but it’s actually a very real psychological phenomenon. Psychologists call this ‘diffusion of responsibility’ and it is closely linked with social pressure.

In one psychological study, participants were placed in a waiting room to see a researcher. While they waited, smoke started coming in from under the door and filling the room. It gradually became more and more, until people started choking.

And no one opened the door to inspect.

But if there’s only one person in the room and it begins to fill with smoke, they will look into the cause.

Why? Because in a large group, the responsibility doesn’t fall to anyone person but is rather ‘diffused’ across the group. Everyone is responsible and so really, no one is responsible. And because no one else is doing anything, this sends a social signal that we shouldn’t either. It must be ‘okay’ or someone would have acted by now. And so, if we act, we will look as though we don’t know what we’re doing and we’ll look stupid or worried as a result.

Not only that, but as soon as we do act, it does become our responsibility. If something goes wrong, people will now be angry at us and this is too much of a risk to take. So again, we freeze and we do nothing.

Often, anything you do is better than nothing. But we’d rather not act because we don’t want to be responsible or take the risk.

And so, this is how you become the action taker: you decide that

risk be damned.

You decide to remind yourself that any action is better than nothing. Action is strong, inaction is week. If you want to be respected, you should act. If you want to help your friend, you should act.

Run through the worst case scenario in your mind – whether that is people being angry at you or whether it is the situation becoming your responsibility, thus leading to you being in trouble.

But now choose to be okay with that scenario and crucially, compare it to the worst case scenario if you don’t act. Which may be worse.

Be okay with your partner being annoyed at you for getting the wrong dinner, in the long run, it is better than losing their respect.

Be okay with your friend dying as a result of you trying to help

them. At least they won’t have died while you watched on and did

nothing.

This is what it means to be a MAN or to be a WOMAN rather than a child. And it is an immensely powerful way to win respect and trust.

Ultimately, a leader needs to lead. That means they need to make decisions and they need to forge their own path.

Chapter 3: Overcoming Social Anxiety – Be Socially Bulletproof

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Chapter 4: Social Nootropics

Chapter 5: Combating Chronic Low-Esteem

Chapter 6: Knowing Your Mission

Chapter 7: The Confidence of Success

Chapter 8: Fit, Strong and Stylish

Chapter 9: The Most Powerful Tool: Meditation

Chapter 10: Putting it All Together: How to be Magnetic

Conclusion: Confidence Checklist

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