Originally Posted by
dickriculous
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I've never given "be confident" as advice. Not only is it terrible advice, it can be dangerous.
If you lack confidence or you feel like shit about yourself, that's your ID telling you that something in your world isn't right and it needs to be changed. Nobody lacks confidence in things they are good at. If you're the shit at math you will be far more confident in any math-related competition than someone who sucks at it, no matter what either of you tell yourselves going into the competition.
If you think "be confident" is useful advice then you have been mislead by the self-esteem movement. Said movement was perpetuated by people using super confident people like Michael Jordon as examples, saying that he was as great as he was because of his confidence, but they got it backwards, he was as confident as he was because of how great he was. The result of the self-esteem movement is a lot of people who's confidence is dangerously disproportionate to their abilities who don't understand how hard it is to be great at anything and think they are entitled to being treated/spoken to as if they are great when really they are mediocre or even terrible.
People who think "be confident" is the answer and telling themselves they are the shit or whatever is going to help are the same people who after 20 years of doing this still need constant reassurance from all of their friends that they don't suck at life, they're not fat, they're beautiful, they're strong, they're not stupid, they're confident, etc.
You're finding out the hard way that changing yourself for the better is actually really hard and simply "becoming confident" out of nowhere or because you or people close to you tell you certain things is a joke.
Such is life.