Self-Confidence Is an Inside Job

Many men lack self-confidence and are busy upholding that facade to friends, coworkers, or partners.

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Real self-confidence for men is elusive. We know how we “should” be, and it seems everyone’s got an idea of what it means to be self-confident. We’ve gotten messages (or a lack of them) from so many different sources—parents, schools, media, women—saying we don’t measure up in some way. The result? We lack reliance on ourselves and our own gut. Our head is swimming with millions of other people’s messages all clamoring for mental airtime, and it’s quite distracting when we need to be trying to tune into our own inner knowing instead. Inside our heads, we may intellectually feel secure knowing she loves us, or that we’re killing it at work, or that we are indeed “good enough,” but our gut pumps out another kind of message. It tells us we’re not worthy, we lack confidence, we’re weak or we’re simply not mastering our lives.

As a psychotherapist in private practice in Phoenix, I specialize in working with men, and the issue of healthy self-confidence attaches onto most other issues men seek counseling for. I’ve seen this consistently over the ten years I’ve been working with guys, and it underlies many of the problems presented in the therapy room: stress management, alcohol abuse, depression, anxiety, dating problems, marital fighting and employment frustrations. Some guys don’t feel confident about their girlfriends being faithful, so they cheat. Other guys lack the confidence to meet women, so they stay alone and unhappy. On the job, there are guys that regularly undermine their own chances of success because of potently low self-confidence levels, so they end up dragging along and being miserable in jobs they hate.

On the surface, it all looks great: confidence abounds and others notice it. But on the inside, it’s a lot different. The reality is that many men are not self-confident inside of themselves, and are busy upholding that facade to friends, coworkers or their wife or girlfriend. Men in my practice talk about how others would see struggle, turmoil and insecurity if they were to look a little closer. One man confessed that he can only hold that facade up for so long, that image that tells others “everything’s fine and that I’ve got it all under control.” But it’s often the emotions that take control of the men on the inside, not the other way around.

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Many guys become slaves to our negative emotions, and end up designing our lives based on that fear and insecurity. So, learning to tune into this deeper knowing may not always be pleasant, and it may be contrary to other people’s messages, but it can bring insight where your mind has been unreliable. Sometimes, negative emotions come up for us when we sit with them, such as in meditation, journaling, therapy, private time or other contemplative practices. The truth is there—we’re just not always listening to it.

A man struggling with self-confidence is generally not an image one finds in advertisements or popular culture. If it is, it’s generally used to exploit that struggling self-confidence to buy into their product or service. Our lives would be better with six-pack abs and stronger orgasms or six-figure salaries and a happy wife, the advertising says. There is little accommodation, culturally speaking, for not feeling self-confident or in control. “The man your man could smell like,” a recent video from the popular Old Spice online marketing campaign, stokes that low-self-confidence, from an olfactory level. Suggests the ad: If you can’t smell right, how could you possibly be confident enough to be with her, let alone have sex with her? Try challenging the messages you are exposed to, because they’re probably not going to give you the self-confidence you’re looking for. You probably won’t get laid if you listen to the Old Spice guy.

Self-confidence cannot be bought, no matter how much we convince ourselves that money, status and owning things have something to do with it. Buying things to stave off the feelings of low-self worth and fear, in the spirit of feeling better about ourselves, is a temporary fix to achieve higher self-confidence. Depression, anxiety and feelings of insecurity or rejection can drive us to seek out temporary fixes to low self-confidence, but for a lot of men I work with, that acquisition of things, experiences and others (read: women and sexual conquests) comes to define who they are. Those external sources of self-confidence eventually fade, and the negative feelings are still there afterwards to deal with, or like many guys, to keep on avoiding.

Confronting the negative inner self critic is a large step towards increasing our self-confidence as men. This self critic is the subtle mental voice inside, constantly reminding us that we need to do better, be better, and act more effectively. It’s constantly monitoring us and appraising our efforts, whether that’s with work, relationships or others areas of performance. That negative inner dialog we experience in our minds feeds off off of self-abusive thinking, and prevents us from being content and confident. In his book, The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life’s Challenges, Paul Gilbert recalls the shock that the Dalai Lama first experienced in how Westerners plagued themselves with self-dissatisfaction, self-loathing and self-criticism. “For all our technology and comforts,” Gilbert writes, “he found us a people in conflict with ourselves.”

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Validating and supporting yourself is a critical element to increasing your self-confidence. Many men didn’t grow up in an environment that was supportive or validating of their aspirations, or of themselves. Their dads were working or weren’t around, or maybe both parents were generally absent. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, research shows that 24 million American children (34 percent) live absent their biological father and that kids who are living with their married, biological (or adoptive) parents are less likely to be poor, to use drugs, to experience educational, health, emotional and behavioral problems. These kids grow into men who lack self-esteem, and can’t develop the tools they need to function in the world, including self-confidence. A lot of men don’t know how to give those things to themselves, as much as they can to others. Learning how to praise yourself, and give yourself kudos is extremely important to help motivate you to greater success. This sounds like common sense, but too many guys simply don’t know how to do give it to themselves.

Improving self-confidence is an inside job to change, not something that external things or other people can provide for us. No relationship can give us the long-lasting confidence we seek. No acquisition of things, people, sexual experiences, or winning can give us that sense of security inside of ourselves we strive to experience for the long term. Being a self-confident man takes some work, but it’s from the inside, not the outside, that produces the long-term results men seek.

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Jason Fierstein, MA, LPC, is a counselor for men and couples, and owner of Phoenix Men’s Counseling in Phoenix, Arizona. He works with guys to improve marriage struggles, deal with anger issues, and develop good mental well-being.

—Photo by somegeekintn/Flickr