How do I fake confidence?

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I've told I'm cute and that I could go on more dates if I "fake confidence". What does that even mean? How do I do it?

I have no idea. If someone can do this, tell me how.

I used to be a poker player in my spare time, so how I showed confidence was to show no emotion. Most social situations are brief (less than 2 hours) and it may take all your inner strength, but you can fake it for that long. At least I can. Everyone's a bit different. If a situation requires some kind of emotional response, fake happiness or empathy. Take your cue from the person or people you're around. It's hard to gauge exactly what they are feeling, but go with the general feel. If you're wrong, oh well. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong to quote Dennis Miller.

apparently it involved 'almost' being a jerk.

You have to completely buy into your lie and then have a melt down once you are finished living the the lie.

As for me confidence is nothing difficult but I found interesting problem - if you behave awkward as lots of AS do and at the same time you are completely confident about yourself it often looks even more awkward for people around including those you want to date. They start feeling uncomfortable near you especially if they are not really so strong confident about themselves - because despite they know how to react on particular situation you react maybe opposite and it looks you know what you do.

Not many people are completely confident about that everything they do is righ, even NT's and thus the vast majority prefers everybody around them to act and react more or less like themselves just to see proof of their own rightness. If they don't recieve proof but instead see some other pattern they can be frustrated easily by that.

The more important thing you do the more your confident awkwardness could frustrate others - one point if you just sit in strange pose and quiet another if you laugh on a funeral - it's just one example. Or as for me people are often frustrated when I completely ignore those who I don't like to see - I just act like if they are just don't exist even if they stand in front of me. It's not acting for me, I really completely pay zero attention to them but NT's see it as something weird and since I do it with confidence and it works they just don't know how to react on the overall situation.

No, it involves being yourself and operating on the assumption that you're good enough as/is!

The only real way to fake it properly as an Aspie is to put on a "mask" or persona. Basically just psych yourself up and pretend you are a confident person. Like an actor playing a role. It takes a lot of energy, mental effort, and intellectual processing to pull off - which will likely leave you drained and possibly even exhausted afterwards.. like an actor giving their career's best performance on stage and then disappearing from sight to retreat backstage in solitude to recharge. That's the best way to fake it. I know, I've done it a few times over my life for important moments. I've also done it when I had to for work purposes.

But in the long run what's far superior is not having to fake it.. and actually being confident in yourself w/o anxiety. Not necessarily feeling arrogant, but, just.. competent & at peace, very present in the moment. This is something one can sustain throughout their life w/o exhaustion. I'm far more confident in myself than ever, but not always at all moments.. but striving towards this is far FAR superior to convincing yourself to put on a persona mask and act your way through one situation at a time.

And on a semi-related note, the movie "Confidence," is actually pretty good. It's semi-related in the sense that the group of thieves do portray confidence in a very good way. They're excellent actors and pull off their scheme by being so confident in what they're able to do that the perception of others is that what they're seeing is reality - much like an illusionist, or a very talented salesmen. It's maybe not the best example of confidence in the world, but it's certainly worth a watch because it's entertaining. Plus you might just pick up on some things about the cool calm demeanour of the actors, their body language, facial expressions etc - all the things that make them confident in their roles within the plot.

Don't fake confidence, build confidence. Faking confidence has never worked for me. I needed to go through a darker period of time. I needed to perform tremendous amounts of self reflection and introspection. More and more I started to believe and see that I am a beautiful, talented, intelligent, clear minded and empathic woman. Friends always told me that, but now I am starting to believe it. I am starting to feel stronger and stronger. I also had to change my life to start believing that: doing things that I had never deared doing, starting to exercize. All at the same time.

You too are worth it. Perhaps you need a little help from someone else to discover that.

This is a commonly regurgitated response. This is what you've been told by the media, 'specialists', parents, etc. The question was how to fake being confident not how to be confident.

You can be superbly confident yet your social performance does not project it. Hence to others, you seem to lack confidence.

Being a jerk (or almost) is basically talking louder than you normally do, not caring about how rude your comment may or not be to others (aka what your 'filter' wouldve normally told you that saying X thing would be improper.. and overriding that filter and saying it just because to others it may sound a little rude but it also makes you seem more confident. Its all a social act), not being as polite or 'nice' to others as you normally would have been (not offering to help or not helping as much as you normally would)... and most importantly, saying 'no' to people's faces directly (not using more polite or diplomatic means of saying no).

NT's respond to dominance as a form of confidence. Its a basic leadership skillset. To not function as part of the group but rather be the one leading the herd and yes, considering the rest your cattle.

It works. Try it yourself some time. You will feel disgusted and wonder how people can lead their lives like this... but it works.

A post of mine from another thread:

And old rant of mine about this same subject:




When the womenphere talk about the sexiness of "confidence", they only mean the social confidence alone - and in specific confidence in talking with women.

The same human may be confident at 100 things while not being confident in other things.

Go confidence!

Yes, JJ's response is a typical response especially among 'gurus' and...well, the ladies who talk a lot about confidence.

The "it involves being yourself and operating on the assumption that you're good enough as/is!" - is a flawed logic and doesn't much reflect reality.

Let's take for example the candidates who come to singing competition shows like The Voice or American Idol......

Many of those candidates actually don't have talent nor voice, they come in front of the jury fully confident that they are good, they are being themselves and operating on the assumption that they are good enough (the same JJ's definition of confidence). What happens then? The jury mocks them, the audience laugh at them, they become national mockery - will such candidates be seen attractive by the majority opposite sex for their displayed "confidence"? Of course not, now they are seen as losers by most, women would have only appreciated their "confidence" if they've proved to be good singers and praised by the jury. And often their confidence to go to stage evaporates after such public failure.

Courage may lead to success (if the person is competent enough) or to disasters - but confidence (in anything) is acquired only thanks to competence and successive successful results for a period of time.

Last edited by The_Face_of_Boo on 19 Nov 2014, 6:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You cannot fake it you need to feel confident to be confident.

You will need to do something that will improve your confidence and self esteem.

I think that Face of Boo makes a lot of extremely good points in here, and reflects a lot of what I was about to say. For example, I can speak a bit about myself. I am very confident in most aspects of my life. I am confident in my career/professional life, my hobbies, solving problems, and much of my personal life. I am confident in those things because I have reason to be - I have improved them through due diligence. When I first started my current job, I wasn't confident at all because I was doing extremely challenging work that I had never seen before. To feign confidence in such a situation would simply be lying to myself and others. However, as I worked through everything, made my mistakes, and began to truly learn how to do the work, I grew to be very confident now. My confidence was gained through repeated success at what I was doing, and positive reinforcement from those around me.

However, when it comes to attracting women, I do not have confidence. I don't have confidence for the same reason that I didn't have confidence when I first started my job: I am doing something that I don't know how to do and have never really done before, and thus far I have not had much success at all. So, to be confident about that situation would be lying to myself. Now, if I am able to learn how to go about properly dating and I start to see more positive reactions, then sure, I will start to gain confidence. But confidence is more of a reactionary quality than anything - no one is confident in something that they repeatedly fail at, regardless of who you are or how you feel about yourself. My lack of confidence in that area says nothing about how I feel about myself or my confidence in other areas of my life - it simply says that I do not trust my ability to do something that I have never had success with before.

I can't tell you what will work for you, but I can tell you what worked for me.

I had zero confidence for the longest time, and didn't realize that was the reason why I failed at pretty much everything. Everyone called me ugly in school. When I was a kid, I accepted it as fact and was mostly OK with being "the smart one". Looking back at old photos, I'm noticing now that I was never ugly... I'm assuming that kids just didn't have the word "awkward" in their vocabulary and needed a word to describe me. It's the only explanation I can come up with. Unfortunately, verbal bullying has lasting effects, and I spent so many years feeling disgusting and unattractive.

Once I learned through research that confidence was pretty much the key to success, I decided that I needed to test it... to figure out how to "turn it on" for short periods, like for a job interview or a first date.

For instance, in a somewhat unrelated example, I remember going on an interview for a job that I lacked qualifications for. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I "confidently" (in quotes because this was completely out-of-character for me) sat forward in my chair and said, "I have no experience whatsoever in _____. However, I'm positive that I'm the fastest learner you've ever met. Give me one-two weeks of training, and I will outperform anyone else you'd choose to hire." The interviewer looked at me with his eyebrows raised and said, "That's a bold statement... I like you. You're hired." then tossed the pile of other resumes in the trash. My first thought after, "Wow, he should have shredded those first." and "I wish they'd do more recycling in Kentucky." was "Holy s@#$! I can't believe that actually worked!" It wasn't a lie, either... I *am* a fast learner. But really, who has the courage to say that? I never would have if it wasn't a planned course of action, that's for sure! For the Neurodiverse, planning it out can help immensely.

Then, I started doing that when talking to guys I found attractive. I've even gone so far as to choose the most attractive ones I could find, and see if I could score a date with them, as a little challenge to myself, but also to numb myself to rejection. I am very competitive by nature (strategy games are my obsession) so it was a game to me. But I quickly noticed that with this "confidence", I got more dates than declines. It kind of blew my mind at first. I even hear "quirky" used in a positive way, like, "You're so cute and quirky!" Of course, this little game has almost exclusively gotten me dates with the wrong types of men. I have almost nothing in common with most of these dudes, and all I really want is a cute and fun Aspie guy.

Anyway, I still lack confidence in some areas of dating (I definitely suck at dating NTs long term, so I often get paranoid that I'm screwing something up) but I'm pretty sure I could ace any interview/talking-to-the-cute-guy-at-the-comic-book-store with this method. It works for me. Granted, I'm female, and we have it a lot easier than men do when it comes to scoring dates. I'm well aware of that. The big thing t o take from my story is that fake confidence can help to build real confidence. You just need a little push to see that you can do it. To the OP: You ARE attractive... it's only the lack of confidence making you unattractive. You should try it, mostly because you have very little to lose and so much to gain. I'm totally rooting for you... you can do this.