Avoid the Confidence Catch-22
29 Aug 2016 · 1 min
Matthew Hussey explains the confidence catch-22: people think they need others' approval to feel confident, but approval only comes after you're already confident. The solution is grounding confidence in your own principles and integrity instead of waiting for external validation.
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Hello everyone, this is Love Life with Matthew Hussey. You know, we've all been hurt in relationships. If we're not careful, we can end up shutting ourselves off completely to protect ourselves from more pain. but that cheats us out of opportunities to find the love we really deserve. So what should we do instead? I want to come back to this at the end of the show, but first, let's get into today's episode. We have an interesting subject today, and it's confidence. And I'm going to keep this really short and sweet because this. I'm going to just give you an epiphany that came to me the other day, an epiphany that I've had many, many times over the years, but it's so. something that every time I have it, it resonates with me on such a deep level, and it might be one of the most empowering thoughts that I ever have. One of the ones that really spurs me on and makes me feel fantastic. Many people feel like they need reasons to be confident that, you know, well, if I were prettier, I would feel confident. If I was attractive, then I would feel confident. I want to challenge this. I was thinking about this the other day. I was thinking about how, when you see a guy in a relationship, and he may not be the best looking guy in the world by objective standards, but his woman thinks he is the sexiest guy on earth because he just carries himself in a certain way. He just commands a room. He commands himself. He has this, he really owns it in every situation. When she goes out, he's not worried about what she's wearing. He's not worried that other guys are gonna hit on her. He's not worried about being jealous and petty, things like that. Instead, he says, you look stunning. You're gonna be the most beautiful person in the room tonight. Go have fun. And he can be so confident with it. that guy is unbelievably attractive the same way as a woman who doesn't get scared because her guy is hot, doesn't get scared because she thinks that other women would be after her guy. She goes out and when she's with him, she can in a funny and playful way say to him, I have the best looking guy in the room. I actually feel bad for all of these other people. I have the best guy in the room. And she can smile at it. When a woman hits on him, she can smile about it and laugh it off because she knows how wonderful she is. She knows that she brings something incredible to the table. She knows that he's lucky to be with her. Now, it's confidence itself that makes you attractive. Now, that's not to say that there aren't parts of us that we couldn't improve. Of course we want to improve things. We want to improve our bodies. We want to look the best we can. That's a pride thing. That's to do with pride, personal pride. I want to go out there looking my best, but don't ever convince yourself that you need those things in order to be confident. You can be confident without those things. Now, in other episodes at other times or in my programs, we'll talk a lot more about what creates confidence, but I'll finish with this thought to leave you with. If we go on the basis that in order to be attractive, you need to be confident. Here's what happens. When you do get confident and people find you attractive, you'll get the validation, you'll get people coming to you and telling you you're attractive. pointing it out and it will give you all of these reasons to feel more confident. But the argument would be, how do I just feel confident when I haven't got those comments from people yet? When people aren't telling me I'm attractive right now, when people aren't chasing me down, how is it I just feel confident so that I can go out and get that in the first place? It feels like a catch 22. Well, the only way to close that gap, to close the loop in the beginning, is to not need the validation in order to be confident. It's to not need other people's approval. To be confident in your own message and in what you do and in your principles and your values and not superficial things like how you look. I'm talking about the confidence that comes with integrity, the confidence that comes from having certain principles that you live by and being confident in the way that you live and what you choose to add to the world. and people's lives. If you're confident in that before you even show up to the party, when you get there, you won't need other people's validation to feel good because you'll have already validated yourself. This is what it means to validate yourself from within and not from without. Get the validation from within, which gives you the confidence, which makes you attractive. Isn't that cool? I will see you soon, my friends. Come join me on Facebook for the discussion facebook.com/CoachMatthewHussey. I will see you there. I love you. Have fun. Enjoy your day.
Bye-bye.
At the beginning of today's show, I brought up the question, How can we open ourselves up to love again when we've been hurt? In one of my live In these seminars, I actually coached a woman through this in a Q&A session and I want to give you free access to it today. I call this video, the 3 Female Mindsets that Drive Men Wild and it's filled with empowering and practical advice that you can use today. To get your free access, just go to lovelifepodcast.com/mindsets.

