Got a question on my response to another post and realized i should post it as a new topic. Some of my thoughts and personal experiences, would love some criticism and other perspectives. Here is the conversation:

Lucius.
"Man, Ive definitely felt the same way before, I have personally strove to become a confident individual for a long time. For years I struggled to understand the concept of self confidence, however, it always seemed to elude me, and for a long time I truly felt like I wasnt born with the capability to be confident. To me confidence stems from how certain or assured I feel in my ability to be successful at a given task. Essentially confidence comes from experience, taking right action, and positive reinforcement, which in turn builds certitude and confidence. Although experience is essential the necessary ingredient to ensure that experience leads to confidence is self esteem. Self eseteem and confidence are often confused; however, they are very different. Self esteem does not come from experience, it comes from love. A love of ourselves, of others, life, and the universe, regardless of external conditions, outcomes, or our emotional state. Confidence can be built without self esteem but it has no substance or consistencey. An individual with self esteem may not have confidence in their abilities or effectiveness, however, they will be able to pursue positive experiences freely and easily because they are unaffected by failure. This leads to true confidence in all situations; confidence that is stable, sourced in our certitude and our sheer love for ourselves and all of the experiences that life has to offer. I know this because I worked tirelessly for seven years to improve my self confidence and made very little progress because I lacked self esteem. Focusing on building a foundation of self esteem has allowed me to build solid confidence, and the little voices that used to attack me from my unconscious have started to chill the fuck out."


Soren K
"Lucius, glad to hear you got this shit figured out? How did you go about doing it? Was it the fact that you made it a goal and put your focus towards it, or was it any certain 'things' that did it for you? I'm curious!? And, what did you do for self-esteem, that's a huge one for me! Thanks"


Lucius.
"By no means have i got it all figured out. However, I feel I do have an understanding of the path I need to be taking in life. 7 years ago before I started studying social dynamics and sexuality I was so afraid of social rejection that I would have an anxiety attack every time I would come into contact with another human being other than my parents. I truly had no social skills, despite being good looking, athletic, having good grades, a wealthy family, guaranteed university education, being super fit, well groomed, etc. I actually had all of the shit we are told gets girls and for some god damn reason they had no interest in me and it drove me insane. So when i was 15 i started studying and practicing, and after years of work I finally was in a place where i didnt get anxiety attacks, i had tons of women in my life, and I was the leader of a bunch of social groups. At that time I definitely felt confident, I was like "yeah, look at my skills now, Ive picked up and slept with multiple women in the same day, I have a great relationship, great friends, ive got this shit handled". I had confidence in my ability to be able to go up and get any girl i wanted because I had countless experiences to draw upon that reinforced this belief. However, I still had no self esteem at this point, and even tho I was like "yeah i can get girls" i still felt like I was a valueless piece of shit deep down. Getting a bunch of girls didnt fix it, getting super confident in my game didnt fix it. So i basically had a huge mid life crisis when i was only 20 because i had spent 5 years working my ass off to be able to get girls and once i had got them i felt even more unhappy with my self. I lost everything, almost dropped out of school, then i decided i needed to do something really radical, so i started living with some Vaishnava monks and began practicing meditation for over 3 hrs a day, and was reading and discussing the Bhagavad Gita and other Vedic texts daily. After living with the monks for a month i left to start studying other forms of meditation (Buddhist, Taoist, Therapeutic, Tantric), and for around 5 months i meditated for around 5 hours a day. Around the 4 month mark I began to completely disconnect from external reality. My thought process was no longer being affected by my environment, which allowed me to finally connect with and understand the emotions that had been unconsciously driving my actions. I realized that I had been hiding, hiding from my past and hiding from my true self. When I was a kid i went to a school with only 150 kids, and unfortunately I was the social outcast. I was the social outcast, and the bad kid, because every single day when i would get pushed around by the popular kids I wouldnt just take it like a bitch, I would fight back, but as soon as i fought back they would rat on me, and since the popular kids were also popular with the teachers i would essentially get in trouble. Every single day I would get punished for trying to defend myself, and eventually one day i just broke. I just couldnt keep fighting, i gave up, and just started crying, and went to a corner of the playground by myself, and just stayed there and cried until my teacher realized i didnt come back to class. I broke because the only friend I had dropped me to be cool, I felt like I was going to die, I had nobody, and couldnt figure out why other people were constantly harassing me. The answer my 8 year old self came up with was that I simply had absolutely no value as a human being, that could be the only possible reason why people would treat me this way. From that moment on I spent the rest of my life constantly trying to cultivate more value to counterbalance the fact that I was valueless. Deep down I had no love for myself, no love for others, no love for life, i was constantly thinking about life, death, and purpose, I became obsessed with philosophy and logic. Essentially I had absolutely ZERO self esteem, but after 5 months of intense meditation I was finally able to realize I had created limiting beliefs at various points in my life where I experienced an emotional imprint, and that these limiting beliefs were essentially responsible for all of the bad emotions that I experience on a daily basis. Facing my limiting beliefs was the first step I took towards becoming an individual with self esteem. Now this takes a bit of explaining.

To me self esteem comes from recognizing that value judgement is a function of the ego, value judgement is our unconscious' way of quickly assessing whether or not something is beneficial to our "selves". If I derive my reality from an egoistic perspective then my personal value judgments will be solely responsible for all of the good and bad emotions that I experience. If my ego determines that I am cultivating value then I will experience good emotions, if I am straying from value then i will experience bad emotions. In the end, if I want to seriously be in control of my emotional state then the only solution is to drop value judgments all together by letting go of the ego. If I just let go of my ego completely, and accept that I am who I am, that I am beautiful, that everything is beautiful, then I become emotionally free, independent, strong. From this place of emotional freedom I began to understand true happiness. When I start to accept each moment as it is, without judgement, then each moment (regardless of the circumstances) becomes an integral part of the unfolding of my journey in life. Each moment is an opportunity to experience the greatest gift I have ever been given, life, and that is the greatest gift of all, something which no circumstance could ever detract from. This was the beginning of my journey towards self esteem. Once I freed myself from constantly judging each moment from my insignificant little egoistic perspective I began to accept that all life has equal inherent value in and of itself. When i began to build self esteem it was like starting from scratch, i stopped trying to hide beneath a breathtaking array of social and psychological tactics. In the past i never used routines, but i was in my head constantly moving chess pieces, and i knew i could move the chess pieces so i was confident, but it didnt translate into happiness until i started to let go of the god damn game completely.

For me this was the path i had to take in order to start moving towards a place of true happiness and self esteem. I hope it is helpful, and i dont necessarily prescribe trying to follow what I did exactly, everyone's path is different. I do think there are a few things that will help for everyones journey. Try to slow down your thinking, listen to your emotions, dont resist them, feel them out, try and understand where they are coming from. This will help identify limiting beliefs and emotional imprints that are responsible for negative emotions, which i suggest facing and diving into completely. Once you start to understand yourself emotionally you will begin to be able to take responsibility for your emotional health and happiness. When your in this place of power you will start to understand your path, what you need to give in order to be happy, and how to love without judgment. Then you will definitely be well on your way to realizing how much you fucking love yourself and everything around you, and then you will have self esteem, and happiness. Plus as a side benefit, when you finally love life, yourself and others unconditionally, regardless of fear or emotions, you will have a ridiculous abundance of women in your life because love is sexy as hell. I hope this helps in your journey, i would love to hear your thoughts."

- Lucius
stop going to the gym and start lifting big rocks and carrying them up hills if u want to feel like a real bad ass
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