"How do you become a genuinely confident man?"
Act Like James Bond, Apparently
“Act like James Bond, he doesn’t give a fuck what women think of him and he gets all the pussy”
This was the advice I read on a Red Pill subreddit forum.
I was in a shitty relationship and was searching for advice.
I felt deeply insecure most of the time, like I was lacking a pair of balls and was constantly hungry for her approval.
I wanted to feel like the man in the relationship but the truth was, I felt like the woman.
Act like James Bond, how hard could that be?
Just be cool and indifferent. Almost never speak and project the image that you don’t give a shit.
Because that’s what women like, right? Cold and blank indifference makes all the women wet.
I was seeing her that weekend so I thought I’d give it a try.
This turned out to be a disaster.
It All Comes Out In The Wash
One of my favourite pieces of life wisdom is a saying that’s pretty common in the Midlands of England, where I grew up.
“It all comes out in the wash”
This phrase expresses that, no matter what, the truth will come out eventually.
We were sat on the grass at her University Campus when she turned to me and said:
“What the hell is wrong with you? You’ve barely said a word since you got here”
This was clearly not the panty-dropping response I was promised by the Red Pill guys.
“Nothing. I’m cool.” I said, rather unconvincingly.
At this point, the anxiety that had been secretly crippling me since I first met her that day began to surge in intensity. Palm sweating, thought racing, stomach churning anxiety.
With all of the emotional energy I could muster, I committed to maintaining the façade.
Despite my dishonest attempts to become an international super spy overnight, the truth came boiling to the surface later on in her room, when she frustratingly rejected me after I attempted to initiate sex with her.
Feeling defeated & pathetic, I had nothing left. I cried uncontrollably in front of her.
She did her best to comfort me, but there was no doubt in either of our minds.
The truth had come out in the wash. I was not suave, cool or confident. Far from it.
I had real issues to work on that couldn’t be solved by cheap hacks or quick fix tactics.
What I was attempting was the “fake it till you make it” approach.
Let’s talk about this approach for a minute.
Is “Fake It Till You Make It” A Legit Way To Change?
This is a little complicated.
On the one hand, in order to change permanently, you need to change your behaviours.
And this will feel alien or fake, to some degree because it’s unfamiliar.
Not only to you, but also to your brain.
Every time you think a thought, feel a feeling or perform an action a connection is fired up between brain cells (neurons). This connection becomes stronger with repetition like a muscle lifting weights.
Your thinking, feeling and behavioural habits are the result of these neural connections, which have become strong through a lifetime of repetition.
Luckily, your brain has the capacity to grow new connections, but in order to do so, you must repeat new thoughts, feelings and actions.
In this sense, faking it can be a very viable strategy.
But like any approach, it isn’t a panacea. It has it’s limits, as I discovered.
Below I will propose a better approach that may pay off more in the long run.
Primal Honesty – The Authentic Confidence Builder
One issue I see with the “fake it” approach is that it can easily lend itself to inauthenticity.
Trying too hard to be something you aren’t.
Like a guy who’s broke trying to fake being rich when his time would be better spent facing the truth & finding practical solutions to reaching his goals.
Or a guy trying to act like smooth and cocky to cover up an insecurity with women.
An alternative that I discovered far too late is the concept of “Primal Honesty”
This is where, no matter what, you own the truth about your experience and express it to others, if it’s necessary to do so.
In my personal example, a primally honest way of dealing with the situation would have been to sit with the anxiety, express the fact that I don’t feel good, talk openly about what’s bothering me and see if we can find a solution.
The reason we aren’t this way most of the time is because primal honesty requires serious courage.
It requires that we face the often scary truths and the very real possibility of rejection (rather than trying to avoid our deepest vulnerabilities by acting like James Bond).
The reason I believe this to be a better approach is because by consistently owning the truth of your experience and facing the discomfort, you build very real confidence.
A man who is willing to admit that he’s feeling sad/anxious or vulnerable, especially to others, is not a man who completely lacks confidence.
Applying It
To close this article I want to tell you what happened next.
No longer willing to fool myself and her any longer, I faced the painful truth and ended the relationship.
Fast forwarding to the present day, I practice primal honesty regularly.
For example I recently mentioned to the woman at the local coffee shop that talking to her makes me nervous because I think she’s cute. She was flattered.
I’ll leave you with a quote I came up with.
“The truth will heal you but not before it’s done kicking your ass”