Ask HN: Courses/resources to improve my self-esteem and believe in myself more?

Can you please elaborate more on being competent, and how ti is related to controlling your behaviour? Do you mean, say, to fully focus on mastering professional skills?

I came to this thread to post about BJJ, found that someone already did!

Jiu-jitsu's actually not even my preferred martial art; however, for someone looking to improve themselves I think its about the best there is for a couple of reasons:

- Since it's grappling, you can spar from pretty much day one with minimal chance of injury (compare this with something like boxing where sparring means getting punched in the face). In addition to the martial advantages, sparring is a great way to build confidence.

- Jiu-jitsu is very learnable. Virtually everyone who trains it seriously for a few years becomes a formidable fighter.

- You tend to meet people from many different backgrounds and walks of life. Also, I've found BJJ practitioners to be very welcoming.

- Since competition tends to be an important part of BJJ, there is sort of a built in assumption that everyone is there to help each other become a badass. Even if competition doesn't really interest you, I think that sort of environment translates to people helping you become a more confident person.

- There is a lot to learn and people are always innovating.

- Since many other martial arts do not practice ground fighting, if you eventually decide that some other style of martial art is the one that's right for you, having trained BJJ will always be an asset.

Note: I mention becoming a good fighter or a "badass" because those terms are easy to understand. I don't mean to suggest that you should become some sort of macho, aggressive jerk. From what I've observed, even if someone starts training the martial arts because "they have something to prove" as they get more experienced it stops being about proving how tough they are.

The person was just pointing out that a lot of people won't accept messages from Jordan Peterson, even if they are arriving via third-party courier.

"Don't Shoot The Messenger", etc.

> Toastmasters, on the other hand, forces you to speak to others. Toastmasters explicitly trains members to be supportive and forgiving and to approach you to interact. Toastmasters is like a newbie environment that lets you build your confident.

I agree with this, with just one caveat: many people join Toastmasters with the intention of getting better at public speaking -- and this intention needs to be put in perspective.

How much you truly improve depends very much on the peers you have in your local Toastmasters chapter. The reason for this is because in the Toastmaster's setup, there's very little solid, bespoke instruction on technique (at least at the chapter I attended), and most of the feedback you get are from peers (who are themselves on a journey and have not received any instruction) workshopping your pieces.

Like you say, most Toastmasters communities are often very supportive and encouraging, so if you have latent public speaking skills that just need to be unlocked by means of external validation, Toastmasters will do that for you.

In my case however, I had no baseline skills at all, so I benefited much more from actual instruction and tough love critique (which I got from a place like Second City in Chicago). I was not only taught technique but also fundamental skills on how to structure a story for emotional connection. My confidence grew from my own perception of improved competence rather than from encouragement from others. I personally believe the confidence one gains from competence to be more valuable than mere encouragement, because it obviates the need for one to seek external validation. YMMV.

There's a lot of good advice in this thread, some of it may apply to you and some of it may not. One thing to keep in mind though: many accomplished, good-hearted, and wonderful people have low self-esteem. Similarly, many horrible sociopaths have high self-esteem. Self-esteem really says nothing about your value as a human. Not to minimize your pain, but maybe that perspective can help you find a path to feeling better.