How to Actually Be More Confident (Without Relying on Cheap Tricks)

Google “how to be more confident,” some time. Do you know what type of advice you’ll find out there on the internet?

Generic, bullshit advice that literally doesn’t help a single person.

“Just be yourself!” “Be positive!” “Recall a time you felt powerful!” As if any of this garbage is actually going to help you. Try telling this to some hopelessly depressed dude. Yeah, okay—just be positive. Sure thing.

Give me a break. One of the most frustrating things in my entire LIFE was the complete lack of knowledge on how to actually build confidence.

I recall trying to build confidence in my own life, and I literally scoured the internet and read dozens of books claiming that they’d help me.

They didn’t.

In fact, all they did was waste my time. But I’m not going to waste your time. I’m going to tell you the truth. Once you’re done reading this article, you’ll have a completely practical way to build self-confidence. Let’s go.

Three Types of Confidence

First off, let’s get specific and define what it is that we’re trying to build. In my opinion, a lot of guys confuse these three concepts:

• Confidence
• Core confidence
• Self-esteem

In reality these three items are completely separate.

If you want to build confidence, you have to first know the difference between these three things.

What is Confidence?

Confidence is your trust in a single ability. For example, do you think that you could bench press 225 pounds? If so, you’re confident in your ability to bench press 225.

I’ve been lifting weights for YEARS now, and I went from being a scrawny weakling, to being a jacked behemoth. I put in the work.

So, if somebody asked me how to go from skinny to buff, do you think I’d be confident in my answer? OF COURSE! Because I’ve done it before!

If you haven’t DONE something before, you have no reason to be CONFIDENT in your ability to do it! This is just common sense.

Have you ever passed the LSAT before? Or fixed a toilet? If not, you’re not going to be CONFIDENT that you can do these things, because you haven’t!

Do you see the point? Confidence is area-specific. In other words, confidence is something that has to be EARNED, not GIVEN.

If you have confidence in your ability to play the guitar, it does NOT carry over to other areas. If you can play the guitar really well, but have never stepped foot in the gym, it doesn’t matter how confident you are in your guitar playing abilities. You will not be confident in the gym.

If you’ve been powerlifting for years, but you’ve never learned to cook, it doesn’t matter if you can deadlift 600 pounds. You will not be confident in your ability to cook. Confidence is area-specific.

What is Core Confidence?

Core confidence, on the other hand, is not area specific. Core confidence is your trust in yourself, and in your ability to learn a new skill.

This is what most people refer to, when they want to be more confident. This is the type of confidence they’re referring to.

Core confidence is your trust in yourself. It’s a basic, fundamental trust in your ability to face the challenges that lie ahead.

I’ll talk more about this later, but core confidence is basically what happens when you spend a REALLY long time developing a skill you suck at.

For example, maybe you suck with girls. You’re absolutely terrified of talking to girls, and you have no idea how they work.

Then, you learn how to get a girl’s number. You gain some success, and after a few years, you’re a total stud with women. Every girl wants to date you.

This will help you build CORE confidence. Why? Because you’ll learn that you can accomplish ANYTHING you set your mind to!

Core confidence comes from years of struggling, overcoming obstacles, and building skills. It cannot be built overnight, plain and simple.

Why? Because if you spend YEARS grinding and hustling to develop one skill, you know that you can use that same work ethic and determination to build another skill.

It’s really that simple—once you develop a certain skill to an extremely high level, whatever it may be, you will start to develop core confidence.

I would argue that core confidence is actually what guys want. They want to be confident not in just one area of life, but in all areas of life; I’ll talk more about how to do this later.

What is Self-Esteem?

Confidence often times gets confused with self-esteem, but in reality they’re two entirely different things.

Confidence is your trust in yourself to perform a certain task. It’s pretty simple. Self-esteem, on the other hand, is much different.

Self-esteem is how highly you value yourself. It’s how much you respect yourself and how much you love yourself.

Do you feel like you deserve success? Do you feel like you’re lovable? If not, then you likely have low self-esteem.

Having low self-esteem typically stems from an emotionally dysfunctional childhood; you don’t get the love that you deserve as a child, so because your parents didn’t love you, you feel as if you don’t deserve love.

This is one of the biggest issues when it comes to depression, as well. I wrote an article on how to get out of depression, which I urge you to read.

I had cripplingly low self-esteem for YEARS, but I’ve managed to overcome it—and in this article, I’ll teach you how to do just this.

The Biggest Confidence Myth

A lot of the self-development community is filled with complete and utter hogwash, and learning to become more confident is no exception.

A lot of the woo-woo spiritual guys out there claim that self-confidence should come from some sort of “Self love, man…you gotta realize that we’re all the same spirit, man…love yourself, brother, and you’ll be confident.”

Well, what I would say to that, is to shut the fuck up.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love spirituality. In fact, I’ve even written about the best spirituality books on this blog before. That’s how much I love it.

BUT, confidence does not come from “loving yourself.” It doesn’t matter how much I love myself; if I’ve never repaired a computer, I won’t be confident in my fucking ability to repair a computer.

Confidence comes from competence. Repeat this phrase 5x.

Confidence comes from competence. Confidence comes from competence. CONFIDENCE COMES FROM COMPETENCE.

If you are not COMPETENT in a certain area of your life, you will not be CONFIDENT in that certain area of your life.

This is the secret to building confidence. Don’t “look inwards,” and don’t “learn to love yourself.” Just learn how to be decisive, and get out there and work on what it is that you want to be confident at.

This is literally the only way to develop confidence. Become competent at what it is you want to be confident at.

How to Develop Confidence

First, ask yourself: what do you want to be confident at?

Most men reading this will actually be trying to develop core confidence, so if that’s the case, scroll down to that section.

But what if you don’t give a fuck about core confidence, and you just want to be confident at a specific thing? Well, then go out there and do it.

You want to be confident in the gym? Okay, then go out there and work out. Start lifting weights, cutting fat, and building muscle.

You want to be confident in bed? Okay, then learn how to cure premature ejaculation. Gain some experience, and learn how to last longer in bed.

Or maybe you want to be confident in your ability to record YouTube videos? Okay, then go out there and record some damn YouTube videos.

There’s no magical trick or hack to develop confidence. You just have to do what it is that you want to be confident at.

You want to be confident in your ability to confront someone? Okay, then practice a martial art and get good at confronting someone.

You want to be confident that you can seduce a woman? Okay, then get out there and practice. Learn how to turn a girl on and practice it.

It’s literally that simple. Like I said though, I think that most guys actually want “core confidence,” which is a different, but related, animal.

How to Develop Core Confidence

Core confidence, as I said before, is basically your underlying belief in yourself; it’s a general sense of confidence that isn’t area specific.

For example, I’ve worked pretty hard on developing core confidence (which I’ll talk about later in this article), so even when I take up something new, I’m confident that I will succeed.

Now, keep in mind that core confidence isn’t about being delusional.

When I started Masculine Development, I had zero knowledge of blogging. I had no idea what in the actual FUCK I was doing here.

So, I didn’t delude myself into believing that I’d have the best fucking website in existence after a month or something like that.

Rather, I was confident that WITH EFFORT (and that’s the fucking key) I could make it a great blog, and make money online with it.

…and because of that, I did. I’m now making $15k/month from this blog, but only because I had the humility to acknowledge I didn’t know everything.

I put in the work, started learning about blogging, and spend countless hours practicing the advice I was given.

This is how core confidence works. Now that I’ve built a blog from pure scratch into a money making machine, I’m confident in this.

I’m confident that, you could put me in the middle of nowhere, with no business, and I could build it back up in under a year.

This is how core confidence works. You can only develop it by repeatedly mastering skills that you suck at. There’s just no other way.

Go From Student to Master Multiple Times

The best way to develop core confidence, is to go from student to master multiple times. In other words, master skills that you suck at.

When you start out at something, as a complete beginner, and then spend YEARS cultivating an ability, you go through a long and arduous process.

This process consists of multiple things, such as:

• Overcoming multiple obstacles
• Learning to trust yourself even after failure
• Learning to not take rejection personally
• Learning that if you put in the effort, you will get the results

These traits, over time, develop into core confidence.

Think about it: if you’ve spent YEARS becoming more disciplined, and you went from being a white belt to being a black belt, how the fuck could you NOT be confident in other areas of your life?

You need to learn to start a business? That’s a fucking walk in the park. The same skills that you developed from getting a black belt are applicable.

And this doesn’t have to be martial arts, either. Going from a newbie to a master at ANYTHING will set you on the path of developing core confidence.

Learning game, learning how to build muscle, learning how to shred fat, learning how to do ANYTHING for that matter.

Whatever it is, when you go through years and years of struggle, and come out on top, you start to build what’s known as core confidence.

“But That Takes Forever!”

Of course it fucking takes forever. Evolving from being a whiny little bitch into being a better man takes a LONG TIME.

We live in a culture of instant gratification. Everyone wants the results without having to put in any of the work, but do you know what?

You cannot develop core confidence without putting in effort.

Core confidence is something that takes YEARS to develop. I’ve been on the journey of self-improvement for almost a decade now, and I’m JUST STARTING to develop a high level of core confidence.

And even then, it isn’t 100% there all of the time; sometimes I get insecure or down on myself. Such is life.

But what’s important is that I’m still persisting; THIS is how you build core confidence! You persist regardless of the circumstances. You don’t give up.

Stop being a bitch. You are 100% in control of your life, even if you don’t realize it. You have all the power in the WORLD to transform your life.

Core confidence takes a long time to develop, yes, but 10 years is going to pass by whether you like it or not, so you might as well spend it doing something good for yourself.

And don’t get discouraged—it isn’t like you’re depressed and insecure for a decade and then suddenly you snap into “core confidence,” mode.

In reality, if you start developing your confidence you’ll feel the effects within a month or two. Sometimes, even faster.

Your confidence will slowly improve over the months, which will give you motivation to keep going; so don’t give up.

Just get started, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

How to Develop Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is an entirely different animal than confidence or core confidence. A lack of self-esteem typically stems from a dysfunctional childhood, whereas a lack of confidence is simply due to a lack of skills.

Like developing confidence, developing self-esteem will take a while. It won’t happen overnight. This is just the nature of self improvement.

There are several things that you can do to develop self-esteem, however, that will greatly speed up the process. Here they are.

Meditate Your Way to Healthy Self-Esteem

When your self-esteem is low, it’s usually because you have a bunch of negative repressed emotions that you haven’t dealt with.

For example, say that your parents didn’t give you enough love as a child.

Maybe they weren’t around very often, or they didn’t pay attention to your needs. This is often what causes low self-esteem. It’s always from childhood.

In order to get rid of these negative emotions and thus improve your self-esteem, you must learn how to meditate. This is absolutely essential.

Meditation clears your mind of bullshit emotions and paves the way towards presence and happiness.

When you confront the underlying negative emotions causing your low self-esteem, you will accept them and move on.

I cannot recommend meditation enough, not just for developing a healthy level of self-esteem, but for literally excelling at LIFE.

Learn Game

Interestingly enough, learning to attract women actually forces you to develop a healthy level of self-esteem. Why is this?

Well, because when you get good at attracting a lot of women, you start to realize that you’re good enough for any girl out there.

This is why I write so much about dating advice on my blog. I’ve seen the transformation guys go through when they learn how to get laid.

A lot of guys’ self-esteem is tied to women, too. They feel like if they can’t get a girl they’re proud of, then they aren’t really that worthwhile.

Game changes all of this, however. When you learn how to attract women, you are forced to confront your inner demons.

A lot of people think that game is manipulative… but do you know what? It’s actually the best cure for low self-esteem that I’ve ever found.

When you follow the principles of seduction that I lay out on my blog, which are meant to make your natural personality attractive, you will come to realize that you ARE enough, and your self-esteem will sky rocket.

Cultivate Healthy Relationships

A huge part of having a good level of self-esteem is to develop functional relationships with both men and women, where you both grow and benefit.

Eventually, at some point during your self-development journey, you may have to leave old friends behind.

Some friends are just too negative to deal with. Some are losers who sap your energy and bring you down. You must leave these people behind.

If you want to learn how to be more motivated, then start to replace the negative people in your life with more positive people.

You’ll eventually start to develop what’s called an emotional ecosystem. This is where you have a whole bunch of different people and activities that feed into your life and create a wonderful emotional state 24/7.

I should probably write more about relationships on my blog (that’s been something I’ve been meaning to do lately), but for now, just follow your gut.

If someone makes you feel shitty, don’t hang out with them. Replace them with people who make you feel amazing.

Conclusion: Advice For Your Journey

In summary, developing confidence, core confidence, and self-esteem is one of the most difficult things that you will ever do in your entire life.

But, the trade off is incredibly worth it. When you grow your level of confidence, your entire life seems to fall together.

Your social life improves, because people naturally flock to you. Your sex life improves, because women are drawn to confident men.

Your financial situation improves, because you have the confidence to follow through with your vision, and make more money.

Most importantly, your emotional health improves, because you’ve taken the time to create a healthy foundation for confidence and self-belief.

I genuinely hope this article helps you develop confidence, my friend… and if you have any comments or questions, just let me know down below!