[bikeformind]

Harsh truth. You don’t become confident by standing in the mirror shouting positive affirmations at yourself.

You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.

[allisdust]

Or may be by realising that there is always someone at top and someone below you in everything. And hopefully that will reduce the urge to be at top of everything and that results in compassion towards one's own self.

[TrainedMonkey]

Or maybe everyone has a different path in life.

[maerF0x0]

and yet certain things work for strangely large percentages of people. And yet the classics have found a certain "Human experience" .

[redeux]

I think for some people it takes both.

I’ve been successful in my work over the past decade, but no matter how many awards, how much recognition, or how much money I received, I always struggled with a negative inner voice telling me I was worthless, not living up to my potential, and that people didn’t like me. It was only after I started combatting these thoughts with daily affirmations that the voice turned around, and I recognized when I was feeding myself negative thoughts.

[pjmorris]

> You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.

Yes... and also failing and learning how to take care of yourself, rethink things, and make new plans after you do.

[czx4f4bd]

> You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.

Ironically, this is basically just a positive affirmation in a slightly different form, and it's not any more helpful.

Some people's brains have a remarkable ability to deny, invalidate, or straight-up forget any evidence that would potentially bolster their confidence. This kind of trite advice may be great for people who are already predisposed to confidence and find themselves in a rut, but as someone who's in therapy for this kind of thing, some people need more help to get to a better place.

[HardlyCurious]

If your problem is that you are unjustifiably negative, then maybe chanting positive things to yourself will help.

I think the problem facing most people is having standards they see others meet that they do not.

"I should be married by now" might be a dumb standard, but if most people you know meet it, maybe it isn't the standard that is an issue, right.

In this case, repeating positive statements aren't likely to work, because they won't change the standard or the fact that you aren't meeting it.

[czx4f4bd]

> If your problem is that you are unjustifiably negative, then maybe chanting positive things to yourself will help.

Not sure if I'm misreading you or if you misread me, but my comment was not a defense of positive affirmations. I don't believe that positive affirmations will help with the necessary mental reframing needed to combat deeper emotional trauma and mental health struggles.

That said, I'm not convinced by this:

> I think the problem facing most people is having standards they see others meet that they do not.

If someone feels badly enough about not meeting a standard that those feelings rise to the level of a problem, then I agree that positive affirmations probably won't help, but meeting the standard isn't necessarily a panacea either.

Taking your example, if someone thinks "I should be married by now", there's presumably some kind of deeper emotion behind that. If that feeling is within a normal range and the person can manage it effectively, then it may motivate them to work harder to find a relationship and settle down, but in that case it wouldn't be reasonable to call it a problem.

On the other hand, if they have a stronger feeling like "All my friends are married but me. They must think I'm pathetic." or "I keep getting older but nobody wants to date me. What if I'm just doomed to be alone forever?", then this is much more likely to be problematic. This kind of feeling might motivate them to settle for a relationship that doesn't make them happy, to move more quickly than they're comfortable with, to do things that go against their own needs, to stay in the relationship even in the face of problems, etc. just to try and meet that standard.

In this latter case, the standard isn't the issue, but it's tied to the deeper issue. The standard is the focus in the person's mind because it feels like the truth, but their mental framing is also biased in a way that prevents them from seeing their underlying motivation, and thus from resolving the true problem.

For example, the person who feels pathetic for being the only unmarried person in their friend group likely has deeper confidence issues that won't be addressed by marriage alone, even if their partner is supportive. Likewise, the person who fears being alone forever may temporarily alleviate that fear through marriage, but they'll also probably come to fear their partner leaving them, leading only to more anxiety and distress.

[gernb]

> You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top, and providing your brain undeniable evidence you are who you say you are.

It's not enough for many people, including myself

[onion2k]

You become confident by taking on challenges, repeatedly coming out on top...

If you repeatedly come out on top you're just doing easy things. Ideally you should be failing at about half the things you try to do if you're aiming high enough.