Herald is correct.. it's far more important to be happy with what you do in life, and how you feel about yourself. Self confidence, and a high self esteem will drive your communication. People get distracted by learning routines.. and then they avoid actually working on themselves. Then they run all these routines, but what they don't realise is that they are coming off completely wrong. Running a routine and trying to be something you are not can hurt your chances with women as they sense you are insincere and have an agenda.. remember that women are very intuitive. They develop their intuition from all the interactions with men hitting on them. One of the things that gives me an advantage as an older guy, is being able to pull from that 10-15 years of extra life experience. I don't tell routines.. I talk about my life.
I think it's quite normal to feel a little insecure at 19. Going back to your question though, you admit that you need to improve your inner game. There is often an underlying reason behind inner game issues. Not always, but it is common. Perhaps the person had some childhood trauma, even if it was mild it could have had a lasting impression. Robert Anton Wilson in his book, "Prometheus Rising," called this behavioural imprints, that occurred from traumatic events which took place at times of emotional vulnerability. Otherwise bullying at school, post traumatic stress, or any other traumatic influence could add to a lack of confidence and low self esteem.
People fall into traps of negative reinforcement. If they don't feel confident then they act a certain way or say something because of those feelings, and then they might get a negative reaction from someone.. from a girl maybe.. that adds to their insecure feelings.
We want you to have positive reinforcement. There are ways to improve one's confidence. Boosting your self esteem, as Herald is getting at, is a key component. How can you increase your self esteem? Your self esteem is your overall evaluation of yourself.. you may not even be conscious of how you actually feel about yourself. You may have an overall good opinion of yourself, but specifically with respect to women you have low self esteem. In that situation your Self Esteem is low in one specific area. However, we tend to talk about global self esteem, as when you feel good about yourself it affects every area of your life.
Off the top of my head.. here are some building blocks of self esteem:
- Liking what you do in life.. career.. school.. studying.. your main life's focus at this point in time.
- Your level of optimism about what you are capable of, and what you can and will achieve in the future.
- Your hobbies and passions, and how you feel about them.. how they make you feel.
- Your talents.. what you are good at.
- What you are knowledgeable on, and can talk about with conviction.
- How you feel about your looks, and how you think women perceive you... your Self Image
- The amount of positive reinforcement. People validating you, praising you, agreeing with you. Women flirting with you.
- The amount of negative reinforcement.
- Your beliefs, about yourself, and others.. and your self talk.. how you talk yourself into thinking and feeling certain things.
- Your level of health and fitness.
Where to start? What's driving your current feelings? Answering this may give you an indicator of where to start.
There are also some exercises where you can catch your negative self talk, and stop it before it affects your emotional state. There are self anchoring techniques from NLP where you can elicit really positive emotions, from things you feel really good about.. then you can learn to trigger those good feelings in situations where you used to be uncomfortable.
To simplify:
- Stop negative self talk
- Learn some positive emotional anchoring exercises
- Do things you are good at, passionate about, and that make you feel good emotions
- Have interactions with people purely to build positive reinforcement.. not to get laid. I call this Developing Your Social Self.
