Heya playa, confidence is not something that can develop overnight. It takes time and practice
to get to a point where you feel comfortable enough to talk to your crush, to make a new
friend, to speak your mind and share your thoughts about something. I know this because
for me it was a journey. When I was back in school I was afraid to talk to new people.
I was afraid to kind of speak up and stand out because I was afraid people would judge
me and make fun of me and one of the big factors that I internalized was my looks. I felt like
because my face was covered in pimples because I was this goofy looking kid, no one was really
going to take me seriously even my own peers. But the fact of the matter is this, even if
you're not someone who's "attractive", even if you're not someone that people say "wow
they're super good looking", "they're really tall", "they're really smart", "they have
no acne", "they're muscular", all those different things. You don't need all that to be confident
and today I'm going to explain why. For those of you that are new here, my name is Josh
and every single week I make videos sharing tips, ideas and stories teaching you how to
be your best self so if you want to learn and grow, hit the subscribe button and make
sure to click on the notification bell. Something that took me a really long time to learn is
that you don't need to look perfect in order to charm someone that you like. This kind
of idea of being at the point of perfection is something that holds us back. We look at
ourselves in the mirror and we kind of hear other people talking about us and we feel
like yeah well, when I'm more muscular, when I get rid of my acne, when I feel more comfortable
carrying a full conversation then and only then will I approach the person that I like
but life shouldn't really work like that. You see, everything is small steps, we're
always in the process of learning and growing so even if you're not at the point where you
want to be, you're only going to get to that point by practicing, by learning from each
mistake, learning from each encounter that you have. I've heard the stories of so many
of you guys in the comments of my videos, in The Josh Speaks community over on Discord,
in my DM's on Instagram, and one thing that I notice commonly coming up is people creating
this limiting factor, this one thing they feel that's holding themselves back. They
feel like once they've kind of overcome that specific hurdle in their life, only then can
they approach the person that they like but trust me if you take a different approach,
if instead, you tell yourself OK, this is a limiting factor that I have but despite
this limiting factor, I'm still going to make the effort to smile at my crush, to ask them
how they're doing, to engage in a five-second conversation, to get to know people in their
world, this limiting factor is still there but I've now gotten so much closer to a point
where I don't feel like that thing is in my way, now I'm 100% ready to just jump right
in into asking them to date me because I've built up all the steps I needed to get closer
with them. And I'm gonna be honest with you guys. There is no better time to start talking
to the person that you want to start talking to than right now. I did a video all about
the urgency and the need for asking someone out right now, I'll link it up over here but
the whole point behind that is this. The longer you wait to talk to that person that you like,
the more reasons you give yourself for why you can't do it, the more opportunity you
give for someone else to swoop in and take them away from you. This is something I see
commonly happen. It happened to me when I was in High School too. I waited and waited
and waited for the right opportunity to talk to the girl that I liked and guess what, other
guys were interested in her too. They asked her out, they went on dates with her and I
just kind of stood on the sideline thinking, well when is my chance? When is my opportunity,
all along I had the chance, I had the opportunity, I just didn't really want to take it. Look,
I'm sure you have a very specific reason as to why it just isn't really a good time for
you. Maybe you feel like you don't have enough money saved up to go out on dates. Maybe you
feel like you're just in a bad area where you can't really meet people, maybe you feel
like you need to lose a little bit more weight in order to feel secure around girls. Maybe
your ultimate insecurity is that you're just not tall enough, compared to the average guy
you're a lot shorter and girls won't take you seriously. I know these are real factors,
these are real things that can create insecurities and boundaries for you. I'm not trying to
disqualify them and say that they don't matter. They do matter in this equation but you have
to remember that they shouldn't limit you from making the attempts, from putting yourself
out there. Now I know what you're thinking, yeah but I put myself out there, I get rejected
all the time because of this thing but let me kind of break down why that may be. Humans
tend to minimize their successes and maximize their failures. We tend to focus more on the
negative responses we get from people rather than the positive ones. But here's really
why. When we get a positive response from someone, when someone's nice to us we feel
like that's just the standard for how you should be. People should genuinely be kind
to each other that's pretty normal. But when someone steps outside of that and they're
mean to us, they reject us, they hurt us, or they make a mean comment we feel like they're
breaking from the norm. And that's why it stands out so much. We feel like they're doing
something so dastardly, so different from everyone else and we just don't understand
why. One thing we forget to remember is that experience comes with time. If you're getting
rejected multiple times in a row, it might just be a matter of shifting your mindset
from thinking there is something wrong with me to there is something wrong with what I'm
doing. Look, once you can kind of make that break and allow yourself to disconnect from
what you're doing and who you are, you kind of take the burden off of yourself and you
put it on well, maybe there's a different approach I need to take, maybe I need to start
a conversation with them, maybe I need to open a conversation with them. Maybe I need
to do this thing to enhance my appearance or to minimize the things I that maybe I don't
like about myself and maximize the things that I do. You need to start thinking about
your approach a whole lot more because that's really what you're bringing to the table when
you talk to people. When you're interacting with someone and you get rejected, a lot of
times they're rejecting you because of your approach. They didn't like how you talked
to them. They didn't like what you said. Maybe at first glance, they didn't really like how
you appeared and presented yourself. The fact is this guys, as time goes on you will gain
that experience. You're going to learn more from every interaction that you have and you
can make those small improvements as you go along. So many people just keep doing the
same thing over and over and keep getting failure after failure after failure because
they never make those incremental changes. I'm saying those incremental changes are how
you learn. After speaking to so many of you guys for so many years, I started to notice
certain patterns emerge. One of those patterns is this, that you personally can feel like
your attractiveness hinges on your opinion of your main crush. Meaning if your main crush
doesn't like you if your main crush rejects you, they just don't look at you in a romantic
way, that can be a major blow to your self-esteem. You may tell yourself well look, I really
like this person and they just don't view me like that so why would anyone view me like
that? This person I've invested time and effort into liking doesn't feel the same way about
me how can anyone else like me for my height or my looks or anything like that? They're
all going to reject me for the exact same thing. If you're allowing someone else to
make decisions with your self-esteem then I think you've given up too much control.
You've allowed other people to dictate how you perceive yourself as well so let's say
your main crush, the person you've been crushing on for years just doesn't like you cause you're
just not popular enough. You're really someone who's a bit of a loser or a nerd in your school
well then you're going to feel like no one else is going to like you for those same reasons.
But trust me on this, if you take away that power that you've given this one person and
recognize that everyone has their own thoughts and feelings and experiences and anything
I bring to the table is up for them to interpret on their own and have their own opinion about,
then you start to disconnect the idea that everyone is going to reject you for this one
thing. You start to realize that this person might not actually care as much as that person,
this person might actually like that quality about you, you start to realize that you bring
different things to the table for every interaction you have and every person can kind of observe
it in their own way. Plus, you just gotta keep exploring. You just gotta keep putting
yourself out there. I know it may feel bleak and may feel hopeless, you might feel like
no one is going to love you for this one thing that's holding you back but trust me on that
if you start to believe in yourself. If you start to emphasize your positive qualities
and start to spend less time thinking about your negative qualities or when you do think
about those negative qualities, think about how you can kind of shift the conversation
or shift the focus to something else I think you're going to have way more confidence in
your attractiveness. You're gonna feel like you're someone that's desirable, someone that's
worth getting to know and look, not everyone else is gonna feel that way about you, you
are going to run into people that are going to troll you, people are gonna criticize you,
people are going to reject you, that's part of life. As you gain that experience as you
learn from those rejections, you can start to develop into the person you want to be.
It's something I had experienced as well. As I got older, as I started having more interactions
with girls and talked to more people, I started to focus a lot less on what other people thought
of me and started to focus more on who I wanted to present myself as. And at some point, I
realized wow, I'm comfortable and confident with who I am. I look at myself like this
who I am presenting to the world. This is what I have to give if this person doesn't
really like it or it doesn't go with them that's ok, I can talk to someone else I can
focus on developing different relationships. I'm not hung up on one person's opinion of
me and I don't think you should be either. Now what I want you to do is to leave a comment
down below letting me know what is one attribute about yourself that you feel is not attractive
and what attribute you love to highlight. I'm gonna answer down their too so I can't
wait to read what you guys have to say but like I said, building your confidence is a
journey so I'm gonna link up a video over here that I'd love for you to watch. Watch
as my times as you need to on your confidence journey because I think it's going to help
inspire you and motivate you to really work towards feeling attractive and feeling desirable
for yourself. On that note guys, I'll catch you next time. As always, love and peace!