Chapter 18 | Section 18.2| Societal/Self-Perception
Confidence in yourself is key to turning failures into eventual successes. With confidence, both your view of yourself as well as the way society is viewing you plays a large role. To start with you need to evaluate yourself. When you walk into any room or situation, what do you want the people in that room to think about you? Do you want their visual attention before they’ve met you? Do you want for the people that have talked with you to have found you interesting and memorable? Basically, does your personality and projection of yourself achieve what you are wanting it to? I want no piece of trying to change your physical build and/or appearance… but be fair in your own evaluations and the factors you have immediate control of such as your smile, confidence level of body language/verbal statements, and dressing appropriately for the situation.
Are you putting off the aura that you desire to? Is part of the reason you aren’t that you want to be confident but just aren’t as confident as some of the other people? We’ll address techniques to achieve unreasonable levels of confidence in later chapters. By the time we get done with that, you’ll understand not only how to gain confidence, but how to project confidence you don’t even have and achieve it after your ludicrous over-confident statements have written a check you wonder if you can cash. Go Team.
So evaluate if you are the person you want and hope to be in most situations. Keep in mind that you don’t have to be a loud pompous idiot like me making jokes and trying to entertain the world. If what you want is to evaluate a room, be assertive enough to introduce yourself to the 2 or 3 people you desire to learn more about and ignore the rest of the world… and if you can do that you are rocking it. I’ll discuss later some of the benefits of being the life of the party (which may well come with drawbacks certain people want no part of and that is just Jim-Dandy).
Now that you have a bead on your view of yourself, time to be other people watching your behaviors and interactions. Are they intrigued by you and when given the chance tend to inquire about you? Do they avoid you just as quickly as you want to avoid them? Do you get a lot of “Oh, I wouldn’t have guessed that” after 2 minutes of talking about yourself? If so, then you are likely projecting something that doesn’t do justice to what you want the rest of the world to think about you. Would you get more benefit out of others seeing you and viewing you as a confident person whether you are quiet or outgoing? If so, then you don’t necessarily grab the microphone from the front of the room and start telling epic tales of success, you just need to be confident when you are engaged in conversation.
Now to delve into the rating system… Your perception of yourself and everyone else’ perception of you matter equally here. Is that broken nose you got at age 5 still haunting you today? In reality does anyone else care? Do you feel like every time you talk to someone they must walk away feeling like you are crazy? Chances are they don’t, but you may well assume they do. Do you think you are a rockstar in every job interview? But then afterwards you get the email or phone call saying no thank you? Basically, getting a 1 in this category includes achieving 2 things:
- Are you actually throwing out the projection of the person you want to be?
- Is the outside world reacting to you as you hope, and are they helping you achieve what you want?
Do you feel like every time you meet someone they must have loved the 5 minutes they spent with you, but no one ever invites you to hang out or come back for a 2nd job interview? You’re not a terrible person, but you need to change some things about your approach. And even if you label yourself a 0 here… it doesn’t mean you suck at life; it just means you’ve stepped back and you’re evaluating some things you can improve on.
As an example, what I hope to be in a room full of people is a target (something we’ll spend a full chapter on later). My goal is to go in and become the person everyone can pick on and make the people that are introverted comfortable enough they’ll take a shot at me knowing that there won’t be repercussions. It makes it easier for people with less extroverted personalities to be able to show their personality. Whereas if you walk in like an A-type AssClown they don’t want to say anything because they surely don’t want the A-type AssClown guy to be picking on them in front of the whole group for the rest of the day.
Helm Improvement 