Many of the shy and socially anxious people I coach, when they start working with me, they report that in some occasional social situations they do feel relaxed and confident, and then conversations run much smoother and their social interactions are enjoyable.
But these situations are few and far between, and they would like to make them occur all or as close to all the time as possible. They wanna turn temporary confidence into lasting confidence. That’s what they ask my help for.
Why is it that a person can be in a social situation one day and feel confident, but then be in a similar social situation the next day and feel all nervous and awkward? I wanna explain this intriguing phenomenon, by taking a penetrating look into the psychology of social confidence.
Situational Confidence vs. Core Confidence
The main thing for you to understand is that, in terms of source, there are two types of social confidence: there is situational confidence and there is core confidence.
Situational confidence is generated by a specific circumstance or event. Maybe your boss praised you at your job so later when you go out, you feel really good about yourself. Maybe you read an inspirational article somewhere and it put you in the right headspace. Or maybe you just had a couple of drinks and you’re a bit buzzed. And that makes you more confident.
The problem is that situations like these change pretty fast. And when the situation does change, its effect wears off, and you’re back to your default level of social confidence.
Today your boss may have praised you and you feel confident when you go out, but if tomorrow he doesn’t praise you again, you no longer feel confident. And if on the contrary, he berates you, you feel even more insecure than usual.
Every time you have social confidence one day and lack social confidence the other, you’re gonna find some situational factor that was there the first day and wasn’t there the second, and that factor is responsible for your confidence. It may be very subtle sometimes, but it’s there.
The problem in my view with many self-help products for gaining social confidence is that they mostly teach tactics that manipulate aspects of the situation in order to enhance your confidence. So they only give you situational confidence, not core confidence.
For example, they may tell you to dress well when you go out, because you’ll feel better about yourself and be more confident. And that is often true. You are likely to feel somewhat more confident when you’re well dressed than when you’re not.
But it’s a fleeting, frail and unreliable kind of confidence. Rely on clothes for confidence and the first time for some reason you are dressed sloppily, you’ll feel more insecure than ever. Dressing well is still good advice for many other motives, but it’s not even close to an effective method for gaining strong and stable social confidence.
Core confidence is significantly different from situational confidence.
Core confidence is the type of confidence that’s generated by your beliefs system. It comes from inside yourself, not from outside factors.
Your level of core confidence is created by fundamental beliefs such as your beliefs about yourself (or what psychologists call your self-concept), your beliefs about others, your beliefs about social interactions, etc.
These beliefs have the biggest impact over your thinking patterns. When you’re in a social setting, your mind makes split-second interpretations and evaluations based on these beliefs. And depending on what these interpretations and evaluations are, you’re gonna feel nervous or confident, tense or relaxed. I talk more about this mental process here.
Well, since your beliefs are a lot more stable than external circumstances and a lot more powerful, when you have the right set of beliefs, your thinking will be empowering and you’re gonna feel confident in social settings regardless of the external details.
You can have a really bad day at work and later when you socialize with a bunch of people, still feel confident and have a lot of fun. Because you know deep down that you’re still a cool person, that it’s not a big deal if things sometimes go wrong, and so on.
You can be poorly dressed, be the least cultured person in the room, deal with difficult people, make social faux-pas or have a big zit on your forehead, and still be confident and enjoy yourself. I know because I’ve been in all of these situations personally. That’s what core confidence can do for you.
Developing Lasting Confidence
So, the way to have social confidence that lasts day-in day-out is to aim for core confidence. And the only way to get core confidence is to develop an empowering set of beliefs. It’s your beliefs that ultimately determine your thinking patterns and thus your default level of confidence.
And the good news is that you’re probably just a few beliefs away from an empowering beliefs system. You just need to change a few key personal beliefs you have, and your social confidence will take off.
When I created my Conversation Confidence guide, I created it because I saw of shortage of quality advice for building core social confidence. In this guide you’ll find my practical, straightforward formula for identifying your limiting beliefs and changing them, so you shift your thinking in the right direction and experience an indescribable dose of social confidence.
To date this guide has been purchased by people from over 50 countries, on 6 continents. I invite you to go here to learn more about it and claim your copy. It could just be one of the best investments you’ll ever make.
