RELAXED CONFIDENCE

Cool. Calm. Relaxed.

One idea that has been beaten to death out there is that confidence is all you need to get more success with women. That if you ACT confident, you'll get women interested in you.

Well, this is partly true, but for most of the guys out there, the truth is a bit more elusive. And a bit more complicated.

Allow me to explain:

When you lack confidence, as we all do in some way or another, you have to fight to keep up a good appearance. Sometimes it's a struggle, but we very often have to summon a great deal of energy just to keep up the 'act' of confidence. It feels artificial and stilted. We don't always feel we're "being ourselves."

Let's be real here. No one on the planet is 100% confident 100% of the time. It just doesn't work that way. Every new experience brings a lot of anxiety, and even old experiences where we don't have much success will, too.

We all do our best when it comes to confidence. Every day, if you just behave "normally," you give off the level of confidence that you feel AT THAT MOMENT. Which means that your overall confidence is an average of the highs and lows of the day.

Or, more accurately, your confidence level is determined by the level of confidence you maintain MOST CONSISTENTLY.

Following me?

Good.

The peaks of your day are those times you feel most prepared and capable, able to handle a situation. You feel this way primarily because of your BELIEFS. You believe it because of a lifetime of evidence acquired that tells you so.

How did you get that evidence? Way back when you had no preconceived notions of who you had to be, or that other people's opinion of you mattered, you tried things. If you were good, you did well, and you kept doing it and got better. You took a chance, got rewarded, and felt the confidence that comes with success. (Even after small failures.)

If you failed, or didn't do well, chances are that the failures didn't bother you as much when you were younger. So, you were also likely to persevere long enough to get good so that you built that confidence anyway. If you didn't persevere, you dropped that skill and got no confidence.

This is typically what happens to most men with women. Without knowing the basic rules of engagement (military engagement, not marriage engagement), they stumbled into the arena of women and fell flat on their face. Some persisted, others didn't.

The ones that did would figure some things out, but not always understand why certain things worked. (That's the problem with early successes is that you never get the analytical understanding of WHY things worked.)

The ones that didn't persist fell into a gloomy pit of despair, often taking the first woman they could find, and very often marrying her.

So what does this have to do with the relaxation?

I'm glad I asked.

The confidence you built gave you something that people with SIMULATED confidence (sometimes called 'bravado' or 'arrogance') do not have.

Relaxed.

Calm.

Cool.

These are the words that are linked to the most real form of confidence. Anything else is an imitation. Now, I will say that I'd rather you go out there and fake your self-confidence if it means getting you on the right track. But what you need to do to make that "fake" confidence real is find a way to be cool, calm, and relaxed as you do it.

In fact, almost every single guy has to "fake" it to get himself where he wants to be. I find that I'm at my least confident early in the morning, and that after I've had a little time to build up my self-talk and discard the nagging voice of Doubt, I'm well on my way. (A double-Espresso really helps, too.)

How to relax is perhaps beyond the scope of this newsletter, but I will give you some pointers:

- Relaxation starts with your physical presentation. SLOW DOWN! Move slower and talk a little slower. That will help you pace yourself into a calm zone.

- Don't overdo the caffeine. I joked about the double-Espresso, but too much caffeine is not good for you, as well as making you a bundle of hyper-kinetic nerves. It's like being around a low-grade crack addict.

- Find a mantra - a chant - that you can use to pull yourself back into your 'zone.' Mine is personal and might not make any sense to you: "Instant self-confidence - NOW." And when I say "NOW" I smack my hands together and remember all the times I've felt that rush of confidence, when everything was working just right and I was king-sh*t of the universe. It's an anchor that works well. Find yours and lock it in. Then step back and relax with that feeling.

- Remember that it's up to you to remain emotionally calm. Women count on us for this, and thank us for it when they go nutty. It's the MAN's responsibility to be in control of his emotions. Forget all that feel-good bullsh*t about getting in touch with your feelings. If you're happy the way you are and don't need any deep introspection, don't let today's modern psycho-babble confuse you. Men have evolved to be emotionally controlled, and women are NOT attracted to weepy little wimps. I'm not saying you can't show emotion, but do not be provoked to HAVE an emotion by another person that you do not CHOOSE to have.

I hope you found this helpful. This is a massive breakthrough for men, and I want to make sure this understanding is spread to the world. It's so important that I am working on a new book about male self-confidence, and it's related to the Alpha Male perspective.

If you're not the lead dog, all you're doing is looking at ass. The view is the same back there, so you better move up the dominance scale. Get to the front of the pack.

Back to relaxation -

The reason relaxation is so necessary is that all forms of competence require it and display it when they are real and complete.

When you first learn to ride a bike, you're wired and nervous at having to balance and control it without falling. Now you can do wheelies and ride without holding the handlebars, all with a sense of calm confidence.

Women know this. They are keenly perceptive to other people's emotional states, and if you're nervous, it will show. In the back of her head, she'll interpret this nervousness to mean that you are NOT confident. Nervousness also equals FEAR.

She doesn't respect FEAR. Because FEAR means that you are not equipped to protect her.
She may WANT to pretend your nervousness and fear are something else, and she might want to accept you in spite of it, but her inner thought process (the one she cannot control) will undermine your image to her and she will not be attracted to you.

Calm.

Cool.

Relaxed.

This is what she knows is real confidence.

- Carlos Xuma