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Not sure I entirely agree with johnchangmai and Mr. Assertive. I know a lot of lawyers through parents' contacts, law school friends/acquaintances etc. etc. Some of these lawyers I know are ridiculously goal orientated. I would go so far as to say they were ruthless in achieving their career goals. But put them in front of a pretty lady and they crumble to pieces.
Confidence usually comes from one of two things, I find. Firstly, experience. Secondly, delusion (I will talk more about delusion below, I don't mean it in the usual sense of the word).
Experience - you do something a million times, you get good at it. You know you're good at something, you're confident in it. Even the most shy person will be confident in something - a sport, or the kitchen if they're a good cook, or with some of their model airplanes or whatever. Put them in their arena and they are confident in their own abilities, even if in their social interactions they are ridiculously shy and lacking in confidence. On a social front, if you go out, talk to new people regularly, and have had positive interactions with lots of new people from a relatively young age, then you just know you're good at it (consciously or subconsciously) because you've done it so many times before. You know you're good at it, you're confident in your ability to socialise with new people, you just do it easily.
Delusion - this can be one of a few things. It can be ignorance or a false experience. If you THINK you're good at something (even if you're terrible) then you can be confident. If you don't know the "dangers" of something, then you can come across as confident - you're a confident swimmer when you THINK the ocean is safe, but if you had realised that actually there were loads of hungry sharks or jellyfish nearby, you might not have been so confident. Socially - some people just naturally have a high "embarrassment threshold" - they don't really 'know' the social norms and "rules" that most people do, so they talk to everyone because they aren't restricted by these social norms that most of us have grown up with. Whether that's because their parents and family were very outside of the usual social "rules" so they picked it up naturally, or just because they are that sort of person, I expect there are examples of both.
So why aren't a lot of people confident - I think you can sort of turn those two things around. Firstly, lack of experience. You maybe only talk to a close group of friends and a few members of your family. You might smile and say hi to a few randomers, and maybe even have a couple of superficial "friendships" with a load of people, but in reality you have very few meaningful interactions with other humans. This means you just simply don't have the experience, you don't trust yourself in those situations, you don't know how to act in those situations.
Secondly, being too self aware. You know the "rules" of society. You don't want to be embarrassed because you've broken those rules. So instead you play it safe. You keep quiet. You don't talk to the stranger sitting opposite to you on the bus. You at most smile to the person who walks past you on the street, but don't stop and have a conversation. All because you don't want them to think you're "weird". Often, though, we see the "rules" of society as far more strict than they actually are.
How do you become more confident? Well, it's a bit of work on both of those aspects. The self awareness/delusion issue - well ultimately, the "rules" of society are generally wrong. You can get away with a lot more than those "rules" suggest. Obviously there is a line somewhere, but you can pretty much draw it where you want if you can carry it off in the right manner. But to use some of the examples I discussed above - if you talk to the stranger opposite you on the bus, 99 times out of 100 they will have a civil chat with you. 9 times out of 10 they will have a very friendly chat with you. But you never speak to strangers, because that 1 out of 100 people might think you're weird. Yet, if 99 out of 100 people would chat back to you (even if it was just a civil and short conversation) then that means that only 1 out of 100 people think you would be so weird that they would just ignore you. So if 1 person thinks something is weird, and 99 people think it isn't weird, what is actually weird? Arguably, sitting opposite another human being for 20 minutes on a bus, completely ignoring them and trying to avoid eye contact with your headphones in is far more weird than having a chat. Yet generally in society it seems the other way around! (Little note here: I think that is far more true in the UK; in the US you seem to be a bit more open and friendly, but obviously that just means it's even more weird not to have a chat with someone).
As for the experience issue, well that is key. Practice, practice, practice. Get out of your comfort zone. Go and chat with complete strangers. The newbie mission on here basically gets you to do this. Loads of people give this advice, because it's good! The more times you speak to random people, the better you get at talking to random people. As you get better, your confidence improves. When your confidence improves, you start to talk to even more random people. And as a result of talking to even more random people you get even better at doing it. So your confidence improves even more. Etc etc and it just goes round in one big self improving cycle!
That's my take on it all anyway!
^ this is very good, i would like to ad that with the experience have to come some degree of success, so you can be confident. Experience with no success will not make you confident. But 7000 really really good..
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