Re:Ask HN: Becoming more confident?
by runjake on Friday January 16, 2015 @04:29PM
(#8901834)
I'm over 40, but was once like you. I am also lazy, so I'll be brief:
* Do things, gain experiences. Build robots, take a rock climbing class, go on random hikes, take a dancing class and own your lack of dancing skills. Experiences build a more interesting you, which in turn provides for more interesting things to talk about.
* Read more books on a diverse set of topics that interest you. Watch much less TV (some TV is important from a conversational stance), play far less video games.
* Talk to random people regularly. People next to you in line, the homeless guy that asks you for spare change, maybe even a woman that you do or don't find attractive (this was an excellent crutch in my youth for gaining confidence and it made me realize how deep women were).
* Fake it til you make it.
* Study Buddhism. Learn how materialism and attachment affect you and work to fix it. When you do, external variables will have less of a power to drag you down should something go wrong.
* Realize that everyone else has their own inadequacies and issues behind the facade they present, even people like Obama. And that's OK, it's what makes humans beautiful and interesting.
* Do things, gain experiences. Build robots, take a rock climbing class, go on random hikes, take a dancing class and own your lack of dancing skills. Experiences build a more interesting you, which in turn provides for more interesting things to talk about.
* Read more books on a diverse set of topics that interest you. Watch much less TV (some TV is important from a conversational stance), play far less video games.
* Talk to random people regularly. People next to you in line, the homeless guy that asks you for spare change, maybe even a woman that you do or don't find attractive (this was an excellent crutch in my youth for gaining confidence and it made me realize how deep women were).
* Fake it til you make it.
* Study Buddhism. Learn how materialism and attachment affect you and work to fix it. When you do, external variables will have less of a power to drag you down should something go wrong.
* Realize that everyone else has their own inadequacies and issues behind the facade they present, even people like Obama. And that's OK, it's what makes humans beautiful and interesting.