Have you ever wondered what's the true power of self confidence?
In our previous lessons we introduced the concept of self image psychology, now we will go deeper into real life cases showing how big the effect of having a certain self image can be in our lives.
I hope you understood why it is important to have a positive image of yourself.
To quickly recap:
"The better the self image you have of yourself and the more happy and ambitious you tend to become in all the areas of your life."
Before we go on learning about the power of self-confidence, here’s a story of mine that will help you better understand where I was coming from years ago.
Screwing Up a Lay Handed Over a Silver Plate
That’s in fact how I was reacting precisely 2 years ago (2016) when I was hitting one of the lowest points of my life (and lost that opportunity with that beautiful woman that even Freddy Mercury would have managed to sleep with at my place.)
Let me tell you what happened so that you can understand how sneaky self-denial can be.
During that period I had somehow entered a negative spiral caused by the fact that I was not successful with women due to a too rigid and technical approach I adopted back then.
I laugh at it now, but I was mainly operating like an emotionless android, talking to women like they were objects.
This rigid mentality I adopted, contributed to the worsening of my dating skills, and consequently of my self-esteem.
That was totally crazy as I had never felt like that in my life before that time. It was as if the world had lost its colors and everything had turned black and white with no ambiance sounds.
Moving to the North of Italy
It was the end of summer, and I had moved to Brescia, a city in the north of Italy next to Milan, to work in the marketing sector of a dance record label.
I was very excited to start my life again in this new city, after all, I was really good at approaching women after years of practice and wanted to test my abilities in the north of Italy, a place I always heard to be one of the easiest to have fun with women.
For some reason, it was a period where I had lost touch with my inner child and creativity and was taking things a little bit too seriously.
Every time I got off work I made a habit of opening set after set by using canned lines and a very rigid structure, all of that coupled with a very tense vibe (I was not aware of this back then.)
I remember that in just one month I had talked to more than 60 women with minimal results. It was very frustrating as that was not possible after all, the north of Italy was supposed to be a fun place!
Day after day I felt like I was going backward and deeper and deeper into a negative spiral of tension, self-denial, and refusal to get rejected by women.
The more I was approaching, and the worse things seemed to go and, even if I was practicing every day instead of going forward with my dating skills It felt like I was going back to the old days when I was a beginner. That felt horrible, and I didn’t know what was happening to me.
Something Was Off Me
The confirmation that I was going through one of the worst periods of my life came during one really amazing, pleasant and sunny… just kidding.
It was a cold October Saturday afternoon when a woman I had known back during summer in Sicily was coming from Milan (where she was studying) to Brescia (where she was from originally) for a date I had invited her to.
She was a brunette woman (my favorite type) with a very feminine face having soft facial features, a sensual voice and a tiny but curvy body that made my hormones skyrocket like Elon Musk’s toys do lately.
We had met 2 months before (August) during a bonfire I had organized with my friends on the beach (I am from the south of Italy where it’s hot, and we use to have parties like those.
Meeting And Cooking Her To Slow Fire
When we met It was almost the end of summertime, and I was genuinely having the time of my life. My vibe back then was relaxed, fun and very spontaneous, a fact that made me interact in an entirely different way with women.
The first days she arrived in Sicily there were a couple of guys hitting on her, but I had sensed that they were not having success with her. That’s why, seeing the opportunity, I decided to seduce her during the bonfire party.
It was a warm but dry summer night with no wind. She was sitting on her towel next to the bonfire talking to one of the two guys hitting on her, but there was a free place on the other side of the beach towel.
So I sat next to her and started to talk about light, funny stuff and about the stars that were glistening above our heads while the fire was warming the situation up.
The atmosphere was very sensual and very favorable to flirt, all to my advantage basically.
After some minutes of talking with me she had forgotten about the other guy and put all her attention on me, in fact, she was listening to my voice telling her about the constellations above us while her head was placed on my right shoulder.
I warmed her up like that until the sunrise came.
Unfortunately, there was both no time or chance to bring her away from the party that same night away as both the friends she had come to the party with were there while everybody else was virtually around us.
Anyway, that was not a problem for me as I knew she was from Brescia and that I would have moved there in just a month.
Shortly after the sunrise, she went away with the other guys, and we said goodbye with a “let’s keep in touch” clearly alluding that something else would have happened between us.
Flash forwarding those two months, we come back to my dull and rigid reality with those shitty feelings of internal discomfort, escapism, and tension.
I don’t really know if all of that started from my failed approaches in Brescia or from the tension of the new job, but there I was, utterly transformed from the seductive, fun and bold beach dude to the tense, unhappy and insecure guy in the cold northern city.
You’re about to learn how my story ended, before we do this, let’s dive deeper into the concepts of self-image so that you can get a better grasp of what’s about to come.
Unworthiness = Failure
The lower your self image and the less you’re going to accomplish in your life because you will not feel worthy of success.
Then the higher your self image is, the more you will want to express yourself because you will feel comfortable with who you are and your social relationships will improve as a consequence of that.
Always remember that you can’t achieve more success in your life than the one you think you deserve. The salesman example is a perfect example of that.
Think about a salesman that wants to earn more in his job, he then focuses all his attention on strategies and techniques to earn more and consciously strives to get more and more.
What the salesperson doesn’t know is that before trying to make more money he needs to fix one little thing. If the salesperson is not yet making the amount of money he or she desires to make, the reason is that there is an underlying issue of self image that has to be fixed BEFORE earning more money.
That’s the reason why many salesperson fail to get more money, the goal of themselves making more money is not in line with their subconscious self image and so they fail to earn them.
Trying to achieve that goal without changing the self image first will not lead to lasting positive change but only to TEMPORARY RESULTS that will be then substituted by the results linked to the old image.
Another example is the one of the person who’s trying to get physically in shape. Many people want to consciously have a better body but a great part of them does not really think that they DESERVE it deep down.
So what happens usually is that a person subscribes to the gym or starts a new diet and keeps it with a lot of effort, just to realise, afterwards, that he or she can’t keep going anymore this way because that’s too much for him. A psychological burnout is experienced and the poor person finds himself back on eating junk food and slouching on the sofa.
This occurred because they tried to change something external (their body) without changing first the way they viewed themselves (self image).
Since science tells us that the subconscious mind is what controls everything, the person can’t help but accept the defeat since the power of the subconscious mind is always stronger.
Much different results he had obtained if only he changed how he viewed himself!
Now time to come back to my story.
That Afternoon... What The Hell Did I Do?!
The afternoon we met we went for a walk in the Castle of Brescia that was a beautiful creation right in the city center, where I was living.
While walking up and down through the castle, I could sense that she was really into me, probably still enchanted from the energy I had left her that night.
In fact, as she was showing me every corner of the castle and bringing me in particular places where it was OBVIOUS that I should have kissed her.
The problem was that somehow I didn’t feel enough for the move that afternoon. I didn’t feel good with myself, I felt rusted and without courage and I didn’t know why.
It felt like I couldn’t express my sexual interest to her and like I was even insecure about showing her my interest.
It was strange as during the first month there I was working out 5 times per week with high intensity, a thing that made me very confident in my image (in this case working out was my escapism to my feelings of internal discomfort.)
This time I could sense that she perceived something was off in me, yet she was not sure of what was going around.
We Get To My Apartment
After spending more than one hour walking around the castle, not knowing what to do, I invited her to my place for dinner. She accepted after faking to have some commitments.
Great move you might think, right? Yes, absolutely, if that was not another way to escape being sexual.
We went to the supermarket near my house and bought some food to cook together. Until we got to my house, we talked and talked and talked about our life experiences, travels, and other bullshit except for those spicy topics that make things more interesting.
When we finally got to my home, we started cooking some rice salad while talking about the same bullshits, without making the interaction sexual or somewhat warm as during that summer night.
That was my responsibility as she was clearly showing signs of being open to such topics by introducing some of them.
For some reason, I didn’t resonate with those topics and didn’t feel at ease with making the interaction more sexual. I was so disconnected from myself and from the masculine energy that I talked about platonic stuff all the time while eating my rice dish.
I am sure that if the plate could speak it would have told me to stop kissing the fork and to rather kiss and throw her in the big red sofa that was right next to us.
I Ended Up Cleaning Dishes
End of the story, we finished eating and the night ended with her going away because of a “commitment” she had and me cleaning the dishes she had cooked (she was a decent cook I have to say).
Well, guys, that was the sad story and the evident lay handed to me on a silver platter was thrown on the trash bin. A whole me wouldn’t have behaved this way on that occasion.
The problem was that I didn’t feel whole during that month, I didn’t feel enough, I didn’t accept how I was, and that’s why I was putting all my energies in working out.
I had created a “tougher” version of me that was perfect, that shouldn’t have made mistakes, and that was able to coldly face anything in life without feelings.
This version was making it hard for me to relate to my senses and to the natural imperfections that we all have, a thing that prevented me from being as spontaneous as I should have been with that woman.
The problem was that this version of me was not there in times of need, all because I had to prove to the world that I was something more of who I actually was.
You will understand more of that by reading the post as if you don’t accept yourself first as you are, all the things you build upon you may just be a house of cards, crumbling in seconds like a sand castle hit by a wave.
Now that you heard this story and had a grasp on the importance of self-acceptance, it’s time to talk about it a little more so that you can better understand its dynamics and implications in life.
Before you go, there’s an exercise for you.
Your Exercise
Think about a time in your past when you desperately tried to change something with only the aid of your willpower. A time where you Fought with all your heart against something that you wanted but you couldn’t not achieve for some reason.
It could have been a friendship relationship, a love one, a job, your body, a competition you wanted to win, a specific result you wanted but that you always couldn’t get for some mysterious reason.
Take your day to think about this and when you have found something, get back to me sharing what it was.
GOOD LUCK!