Do you think this woman is right about "confidence"?

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Ok, my unpopular and probably incorrect view on this subject, but here it goes:

[Youtube] The dangers of self-esteem boosting

I swear I would personally demand € 1 everytime I witness someone going on about how confidence will turn the "loser" you (or whatever person they're on about) into an adonis that everyone will love, purely because the confident person loves himself or herself, which is what confidence is about really? Loving yourself, but if everyone else doesn't see that spark in you that you are so confident about, then what's the point?

I guess I must have a skewed concept of what confidence or high self-esteem really is, judging by how society raves about it.

I think she's primarily right.

I believe in "true" confidence, rather than "false" confidence, though.

Yeah confidence needs to be founded on something, otherwise it seems like promoting a kind of self delusion.

I suppose a person could consider stage fright as an example. Does that mean you can solve by making yourself feel more confident? Or maybe instead, practice and rehearse the speech or performance until you completely own it in your mind. That would give you a reason to feel confident.

I had to do this to get through dumb college electives requiring me to speak to the class. I did my damndest to find topics I already knew that could be related to the assignment so that I had a passion for the topic and enough familiarity I could nearly improvise my talk.

I've always questioned what 'confidence' is as well.

According to the dictionary it is 'believing in yourself' and 'trusting your feelings'. Good self-esteem is just being completely happy with who you are.

But socially speaking confidence is given another definition.

If you are perfectly happy with who you are and what you are, then you could say this is true confidence.

For example you might not be a shy person but a quiet person and simply choose not to talk unless you feel a good reason to. You might have decent social skills and find most situations it is easy to get comfortable.

But you might be seen as a shy nerd.

Society seems to think confidence just means the whole 'smooth-talking, joker' guy who is very social and has all the people around him. The 'life-of-the-party' kind of people.

What makes confidence and social skills the same thing? They are related yes.

But if you feel that you are a confident person but simply don't PROJECT it and only show your confident side selectively does this mean you have poor confidence/social skills?

My advice: Be your best self, work on being happy with who and what you are. Do not worry about confidence. As said before, 'true' confidence is exactly this in the first place - being happy with who and what you are.

If you become happy with who and what you are you will become confident.

My social confidence is largely based on the idea that everyone is stupid about something, and if you can find out what that 'something' is for someone, you can usually derive some confidence from knowing more than that other person.

For instance, I know more about programming and network management than anyone with any authority over me at work, I know more about the Bible than most people at church, and I know more about cooking than most of my male relatives and acquaintances.

On occasion, I've even provoked some embarrassment by showning off my greater knowledge when some arrogant know-it-all couldn't solve a simple problem, answer a simple question, or prepare a simple meal for six without burning down the kitchen.

While I may be unable to use words to convince anyone of my expertise, all it takes is a simple demonstration to show with results what I could not describe with words. Lacking confidence, I could never have done these things, because I would not have even tried.

If I lacked confidence, completely, I would never have passed a job interview, married my wife, or held my ground against a neighbor who accused me of throwing trash into his yard.

Without confidence, what are you going to rely on? Good looks? Good luck? The kindness of strangers?

I spent almost 3 decades faking confidence and trying to project an extroverted ideal of it, and it took a toll on me for which I am still trying to unwind some of the damage. I will sort of take a humanistic track here and emphasize that it should be an authentic sense of confidence, and that may make it limited to certain areas of interest, it may not be in your face and extroverted, but it is better to be secure in that healthy sense of self-identity than constantly putting on a facade. Over time I just could not maintain it after a point, as someone with kinetic and touch synesthesia it began to show itself in physical ailments, what some might have traditionally called somatoform responses, but given our increased understanding of sensory issues, it was a very real result due to my underlying neurology. Not trying to be egocentric here though, just want to illustrate a point, the dominant social paradigm consistently puts out this ideal of what is desirable or supposedly normative human behavior. The pressure to conform, to change fundamental aspects of our nature and hide who we are is taxing, draining, and quite frankly a pretty short trip towards more pronounced mental illness. Personally I think, a lot of the co-morbid mental illnesses listed for AS are certainly based more on societal pressures imposed on us than some inherent genetic predisposition to them. A lot of happily adjusted NT's are perfectly comfortable with what they believe they are perceiving in object reality, completely oblivious to their own filters, assumptions, and socially accepted ritualized behaviors, thus when they see something that is part of their assumptions about how reality should be that accept it readily and believe that to be the appropriate approach. When I am feeling less than compassionate I often refer to them as culturally programmed automatons. So the extrovert culture, even in the loftiest business schools, teach this sort of extroverted confidence ideal, but it is really just culturally sanctioned sophistry and rhetoric and a lot of folks do a lot of harm to themselves just trying to fit into a mental archetype that is just unnatural to them. I suppose in the case of self-confidence and advice on that topic, it is a "if the shoe fits wear it, if it doesn't throw it away", self honesty and self understanding are going to lead to a happier and healthier worldview.