How Real Confidence Is Built

The world isn’t always friendly, and no matter how prepared we seem to be — we keep being surprised (not always positively) by Nature’s wild & unpredictable, well, nature.

To live in such an environment is stressful for most of us, if not all of us, people throughout time have sought ways to cope with this overwhelming situation and even though we found ways to be more offensive against life, our defenses didn’t improve much.

Just look at the world today, the biggest “criminal” of our modern era is stress:

“The morbidity and mortality due to stress-related illness is alarming. Emotional stress is a major contributing factor to the six leading causes of death in the United States: cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory disorders, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide.”

— Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3341916/#:~:text=The%20morbidity%20and%20mortality%20due,of%20the%20liver%20and%20suicide.

We’re stressed about everything in one way or another. But what is stress really? Unfortunately stress is unique to each one of us — some are stressed by their work, others by their relationships, and some by the weather. Etc.

What is stress?

Whatever the reason behind our stress, making our best to repress through distractions, mainly through scrolling Facebook or watching funny videos on YouTube is not a solution — and because what worked once doesn’t always do the next time, we keep on looking for more ways to ignore our stress — our demands are pushing technologies to their limits — video games with a TV won’t make it anymore, we have to be “virtually” inside, porn videos won’t make it — we need fake “live” people to pretend we’re having actual sex, going online to connect with people isn’t motivating enough — we need that red colored notification to open our apps. And the list goes on and on.

Although we want to believe the solution to dealing with our stress will come out of technology or some pills, we’re making the mistake of wishing for such an external solution to be born instead of fixing the way we deal with stress — internally.

Who, in the scientific sphere, took the time to actually work on our “built-in” stress-coping-mechanism instead of inventing the next big drug?

Unless we learn to look at things from a more holistic perspective, we won’t have an effective solution — and our current processes will keep breaking society more, and more.

Stress & Confidence

Now what does stress have to do with building confidence? Interestingly enough, it has a lot to do with it — more than most people realize. Let’s find out why.

Basically, what is stress? Here are some common sayings:

• I don’t have enough money to pay my bills, I am stressed.

• I can’t find a partner, I’ll die alone. It stresses me out.

• My boss doesn’t like my work, I might get fired. I can’t sleep because of it.

• The weather doesn’t look good. I don’t feel good when there is no sunlight. I’m stressed.

Etc.

What do we observe from these common things that stress us daily?

First, again, what stresses you out might not stress me out — stress is unique to each one of us — meaning, stress has no real external source but rather exists within ourselves.

Second, just like muscles grow from resistance movements aka stress — stress is practically resistance — and this resistance has for purpose to make us more resilient.

The good side with this “biological mechanism” is that it works wonders when dealing with real, smaller bits of stress — in that way, we’re able to quickly outgrow them and become better at dealing with future similar circumstances.

The bad side comes in when the amount of stress is based on mental fabrics/illusion/speculations without real foundation behind them — or simply, overthinking — which is what we basically do today, all the time.

How many of us are stressed based on speculations rather than actual, physical, real facts?

Stress is resistance, this resistance has for purpose to make us more resilient.

Now if you’ve paid attention to what we said in the above paragraph, stress equals resistance. Try taking this idea and thinking about everything that stresses you today — it’s just that, resisting, fighting with life’s outcomes.

The weather stresses you out? You’re fighting with Nature.

You’re stressed because your boss might fire you? Do you know how complicated the human mind is? The probability of him/her not firing you are as infinite as the ones of him/her firing you.

You’re stressed because your partner might be cheating on you? Leave him/her! Um, w-w-wait a second — you’re simply resisting a natural outcome — you might have ignored it consciously but paying attention to your story together will reveal clues about her/him leaving you.

How probable was it for you to be born with the infinite possible combinations between sperm and ovaries? How probable was it for you to be reading this when you could be an infinite amount of other things instead? If you just had one single different thought from those you had before reading this — you could have changed all the remaining ones and probably would be doing something else right now.

Yes, stress is resistance — but do you want to know what stress really is at the end of the day?

Even more than resistance, stress is arrogance — it’s the broken belief we have about being able to control the outcomes in our lives when their probabilities are just limitless. Stress is the arrogant belief that by resisting our outer reality, we can change it — and the more distorted this belief is — the more stressed we turn out to be until we finally die of a heart attack or some alien illness.

How does it relate to real, true and everlasting confidence?

As mentioned in the beginning of this “piece of text”, people have sought ways to deal with their confidence issues — and most of these ways are a bag of tricks and tips — they can give a boost from time to time but there’s no way to fool our own selves. Unless this main, distorted thought is discarded — the arrogant belief that we can control our environment by resisting its unfoldment will prevent any real confidence in our selves and life in general to exist.

And what is confidence? I’m asking you this right now. Do you have an idea? Think about it. Funnily enough, most people unconsciously believe confidence means more resistance to life. Yes, basically people unconsciously translate confidence as stress 2.0 — a more resisting behavior to life — which is why the tricks and tips don’t make people more confident.

If you want to become really confident, the opposite of resistance is actually the solution. Don’t resist. At all. Let it all be as it is. The truer you are to yourself and to accepting life’s unfoldment just as it is, the more vulnerable you become — ohoo, we fear vulnerability, and yet it’s the secret to real confidence — what can “knock” you out if you already accepted things as they are?

This is the essence of all spiritual teachings — in the acceptance of everything as it is, we are in alignment in life — stress or resistance is stopped, and we flow with life’s rhythm just like a fish does with the ocean.

But what if I don’t want to accept my life as it is?

Who said you should? It’s actually the opposite, in accepting things as they are — you give yourself the freedom to have a broader awareness, one that actually makes you healthier while giving you the peace of mind to actively chase what you want, and not make your best to survive at what life throws at you all the time.

Would you like to pursue your dreams with peace of mind? Or with a desperate, overstressed attitude that drains you without giving you what you want?

Plus, it’s only a change in a main thought — one that makes you believe you can control life by resisting and burning out yourself in the process. Once you become more accepting of life, of everything as it — what can bother you?

Life will look like a river, continuously flowing and unfolding itself right in front of you — in being humble/accepting, you will flow with this river and save yourself from heart attacks and “never seen before illnesses”.