The Confidence of a rich white man

Is anyone confident in their personality? I feel like every situation I'm in, my personality reflects it. I base my jokes, conversation topics, and how I act off of what the people in the current situation will think of me, and this is ridiculous. I would not have the personality that I do if I thought it was a bad personality. Who I am is based on qualities that I find appealing or fun or what I think makes a person a good friend or just someone I would want in my life, so why do I try to hide that? I constantly find myself being the quiet person on the sidelines in social situations with new people, simply because I am not confident in revealing my personality.

I think a lot of people struggle with this, and it goes back to our lack of confidence and our fear of rejection. I choose certain people to hang out with because I like their personalities and styles, but in turn, I assume that they are better than me. I make so many assumptions about people based on so little. If someone has a cool style that I like, then I also assume they must have figured out who they are in life, they are probably more mature than me, they think that I don't belong, they're jokes are probably funnier too, and I assume they think my thoughts and ideas are probably basic compared to their elevated ideas. I just think it can be very easy to let our own lack of confidence bring us down and to assume that everyone else is better than you. However, this is not something that we just have to accept. It's something that we need to change.

(Photo from Pinterest)

Stop assuming the worst

Chances are that people are going to like you for being you. If they don't, then those weren't your kind of people anyways. When I think about meeting new people, I am never going into the situation with the goal to hate someone or judge them, so why do I assume that's always on the verge of happening to me? People want to make friends and learn about new people with the potential for friendship. No one ever has enough people in their life.

Changing our point of view

It can also be helpful to view yourself from someone else's point of view. For instance, I do genuinely like the experiences I have to share, and just because they are different from others' experiences, it does not mean that they are less than or that I am behind in the race to collect experiences. It doesn't mean that everyone else's lives are cooler than mine. If I met myself, I would want to hear about my experiences, and I would enjoy my overall personality. We just have to start looking at ourselves from another perspective to see that we are cool, interesting people. We need to build ourselves the ego of a rich white man (but it will be better because our egos will be based off of our super cool personalities instead of money).

Reflect & Remind

I think the best way to go about training yourself to be confident is to prepare yourself before interactions that you're feeling anxious about. If you catch yourself assuming the worst and that everyone else is going to be better than you in some way, then stop that thinking and replace it with this. First, reflect on your past interactions and notice the bad habits you typically do like quieting down, not participating, keeping jokes and stories to yourself, etc. Now, you should start reminding yourself of your worth. These are the pieces that you usually forget about or ignore in social situations. Remind yourself of these qualities that make you fun and interesting and make you who you are. Once you are confidently yourself in front of others one time, any future interactions with them will be much easier and more comfortable because of it. You have nothing to hide anymore; you have shown them how awesome you are, and they liked you for it.

(Photo from Pinterest)

We only have one life, and I do not want to have regrets about something as simple as being quiet when I could've been confident. We should not be spending this life holding back our amazing personalities. We can't let the pressure of meeting new people scare us into hiding. Personally, I am still working on this, actively reminding myself that my personality is worth sharing, but I do see the progress. I am inching closer to achieving the confidence of a rich white man with no money.