is self-confidence and social skills Synonymous?

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...what if you gained confidence, would that automatically boost your social skills? Or is it the same thing. IE you dont have social skills you wont have confidence.

Is it possible to to change your life around simpley by

staying in shape/working out habitually

eating right

positive lifestyle

I know that those generalized plans don't equal confidence and success literally, but I'm pretty sure its impossible to be doing those things if you did not have any confidence.

No, social skills and self-confidence have the potential to be mutually influencing, but they are not synonymous.

ok I mean Positive self-confidence, not narcissistic fascist Hitler-esque persona. Thats something else really

Positive self-confidence could you have that and have no social skills......is that possible?

I'm not sure about that. If you have lots of confidence you can do stuff that gets you in trouble because you have the guts to do it. Social skills are ways of adapting. They have nothing much to do with character. Anyone can have them.

I never considered that you might mean some form of narcissistic fascist Hitler-esque persona.


Yes.

you could be amazingly self-confident, and still be a diplomatic disaster...

I think better social skills might increase your self-confidence, just not so much the other way around...

I think it has been quite well established that poor self-confidence can effect social performance, just as negative reactions to social performance can effect self-confidence.

This is why I do believe these two things are potentially mutually influencing. But I also know that mere confidence is not enough to confer good social performance, and that it is possible for those who lack confidence, to none the less perform adequately (socially).

So I do not believe the two are synonymous, but I do not believe either lacks the potential to influence the other either.

so social skills come first? then comes the self-confidence? Is it not possible to gain confidence taking care of your self and exercising to gain good social skills?????

Is your interest pragmatic lightening020?

I know an extremely confident, gregarious aspie. He goes into bars, goes up to people, tells them random, loud things, hugs them, moves on to the next person and will keep doing this all night.

He has hardly an iota of social skills and yet he is so self-confident, you could never even tell him that.

I have really bad social skills--I'm still at the "lecture at random people" stage, no real give and take with conversation, no real ability to make friends--but I also don't have social phobia. All in all, that makes me an introvert who doesn't really connect with people at all, and I don't actually have much distress from my isolation. I've gotten used to embarrassment, especially since I know that they're honest mistakes and I almost never hurt anybody, only do stupid stuff that makes people think I'm weird. If that counts for confidence, then I guess I'm confident. So no, being confident won't give you better social skills. It's rather unrelated. But it will definitely make your life easier.

Low confidence will make social skills harder to use; but if they were already low to begin with it might not make that much difference. High confidence and low social skills would probably help you handle embarrassment a whole lot better, though, and make the best of what you had. The biggest difference is the emotional impact of having low social skills; if you're OK with it, then it doesn't affect you as much as if you're constantly worried that you're going to mess up.

Change your life around? To some degree, sure. I don't know whether it would be some big, obvious change; you'd probably just have a little bit more of an edge than you used to. Those things do combat physical and psychological illnesses, so you'd be a little less vulnerable to the hard knocks of life.

Doing those things can help build confidence. Mental well-being is connected to physical well-being; it's harder to feel good about yourself if you physically feel tired and weak. It wouldn't be any sort of magic; you might not even notice it at first, or at all, but there's something about physical activity that is rewarding in its own right... and good, plain food is much more rewarding than tasteless, oversalted, overly fatty stuff anyway. (Take a cooking class. Seriously.) You're right. It's not some kind of "do this and you'll automatically be successful and confident and happy". Most people are never perfectly happy, nor as successful as they want to be, and the only people who always feel confident are probably hardcore narcissists. What you're talking about will improve your life, though--probably by making it easier to get through the tough times, because you're a healthier person overall and have more energy to spend.

Tip about physical activity: Find something that you enjoy. If you don't like it, there's no way you'll keep it up.

No.

unfortunately i know first-hand about this.
confident, eccentric and a complete social disaster zone.

Dude..A is A; positive self confidence IS self confidence. That Narcissistic thing you think of is NOT self-confidence.

Most people claim they know that but really don't. Sadly though, that seems to be more apparent in the NT curricula than the AS community....so why you seem to be confused I'm puzzled.

Self-confidence is when you are not afraid of doing things and making mistakes.
Strong and healthy people are usually self-confident, I think.

It's irrelevant that self-confidence can be used for doing evil things because what it's used for doesn't make it something different.

Social skills are about how to behave nicely or attractively instead of strangely.

I've said the world of socialization is incredibly over-rated, and I stand by it.

Y'know one thing that gets me?

People always tell me "you know I say things I don't mean"

Well....I DON'T for the most part!

Last year, I said a total of 4 things I didn't mean; FOUR!


And the sad part is my friends still don't get it. They think I'm joking when I say that, and are likely to freak out when I try to explain it. Or they just let it go thru one ear and out the other cause it scares 'em too much....

Heh...saying what I mean...I should not go anywhere NEAR politics!