Building confidence

Not in that usual sense. Not in the sense where you pick up women in a bar. Or in the sense where you lead a company or a group of men into a real or metaphorical war. These are outward confidences. For many people, this seems hard, but for some men, this is easy. It can be easy to project an image greater than oneself when other people are involved. A father protecting or leading his kids. A general leading men to war even though he might be scared shitless inside. A man approaching a beautiful woman at a bar with charisma and grace.

Men aspire to be like this. I do. People tell me that I am “confident” all the time. Women in particular are attracted to me due to my confidence (not really my looks, as I am not the best looking guy out there). I do have this outward confidence and continue to build it.

I am instead referring to an inner confidence. The behind-the-fence confidence. Confidence where there is no one else in the picture; but just you with yourself. When you are face to face with the true reality of how scared you are of failure. You see the history of failure on things like health, weight, all the rejections from women, all the failed work opportunities. Men like me are full of insecurity internally. Especially when they have to lead themselves and not others.

In some ways, leading others is much easier. Leading yourself is hard.

One of my favorite books of 2022 was the Beck Book. It addresses the psychological aspect towards weight loss, I found to be refreshing and helpful. The book touches on cognitive behavioral therapy ideas to change how you think about problems. It views weight loss as a problem that can be solved as one. It helped me articulate the weight problem, and figure out strategies to solve it. And this action gave me inner confidence that I could, indeed, lose weight. [1]

While I didn’t lose a lot of weight last year, I am still pretty optimistic. It’s a problem that can be solved. But I have to constantly keep reminding myself that it is possible. One of the mechanisms that they use in CBT is “response cards”. I have tried this, but I think the trick is to not overdo it.

Vacation

I am currently on vacation, away from New York City. And wow – all my health metrics look great. I sleep well, eat right, dont have bad habits, and workout consistently. How can I mimic vacation environment in New York?

• Noise: I don’t think noise is necessarily an issue, but worth keeping in mind. Here, I keep the window open and I am right next to a main road. So I hear cars all the time. Maybe NYC is even louder than this.
• Sleep: I sleep when I want and I wake up when I want. This allows me to get plenty of sleep. About 7 to 8 hours on average. Now, parts of this are not really doable in NYC as I have a job, and its common to have late nights, early mornings. But should it be common?
• Alcohol: Zero on this vacation. I feel so great. My hunger is in control too. This can be replicated.
• Food: Its so hard to eat a lot. I am capping out at 1850 calories barely. I have no junk food here. Home cooked stuff. This, I am going to try to have to replicate.
• Exercise: Every other day, I go down to run on the treadmill, or outside. The context switch is easy. I don’t have to worry about external things. And this makes spontaneous exercise achievable. This should be replicated in NYC. It’s a bit tricky, but I think I can do it.
• Stress: Have almost none. Mainly because Im with family. I can afford to even get rid of my phone as I don’t care about anything else. I hope to replicate this in NYC or near work sometime soon too.

So, what was this all about? Just – keep going. Have faith and belief that you can get this done. And remember, the goal is MARATHON 2024.

[1] Interestingly, one thing I didn’t realize is that I think this approach is seeping into other aspects of my life. I am becoming a solution finder, problem solver.