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Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

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Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#131

Post by sverona »

A good deal of the advice in this thread is specialized to the sort of single males that make up the bulk of HN/Reddit/tech. As someone who is neither single nor male (I'm a trans woman,) I wanted to provide another viewpoint.

So this isn't specifically in response to the OP, but as someone who has been there, I hope a passing Googler finds it.

The people telling you to meditate or do cognitive-behavioral therapy are almost certainly right.

Neither of them ever really gave me perceptible results until recently. Here is why. If you exist for long enough inside of your own head, you can forget that it's possible to exist any other way. Some variants of CBT [1] call this "cognitive fusion."

If step one of CBT is "thoughts beget feelings, feelings beget thoughts" then step zero has to be "you are not your thoughts and you are not your feelings." This sounds obvious, but I had to have a dissociative episode to grasp it - if you're as deeply fused with your thoughts as I've been, it may not be something you can really grok by hearing it from another person.

So you do meditation or you do therapy, but you unthinkingly assume that the patterns of thought and feeling that you're trying to replace have always been there, and you can't even perceive them. So it doesn't work - the core of CBT is the practice of talking back to your thoughts, but it's really, really hard to do that if you don't (or can't) see the space between you and your thoughts.

I understand that many people have an easily-accessed self-concept separate from what's inside of their head. Tapping into mine is something I have to work at. I don't know if such theory-of-mind problems are something that coders (or trans women) experience at a higher rate than the general population, but anecdotally it seems to be common enough that this is worth dropping here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_and_commitment_ther...

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#132

Post by jvagner »

acqq wrote: post #129
doboyy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to offer an alternative interpretation on the "be yourself" mantra, because I think there is some wisdom there. You first have to "know thyself", which is difficult, because I don't think introspection is natural to our monkey-brains. Our minds, with all of the peculiar characteristics that have emerged over human history, make it difficult to evaluate ourselves accurately, in the same artists have a hard time…

Still: if you aren‘t willing to change, you won‘t. I know some who go from one to another place where they could, but they don‘t. They stay in they same story just shortly pretending then always claiming that the others are the problem. And I know also some who think that “being themselves“ means keep doing everything exactly like before.

In my own personal experience, I had an occasion where, almost by accident, I felt the absence of all my limiting thoughts, for a short spell.

I get what is being suggested by "be yourself", but I also think people can have a lot of layers that need to be peeled back before that's even evident, and if you propel yourself forward through action and change, one's vantage point of what "being yourself" is may have a qualitatively different aspect to it when certain kinds of limiting behaviors/ beliefs/ habits are excised from one's life, because they're also excised from their mental identification map. Those connections may not be relevant.

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#133

Post by [deleted] »

angadkalra wrote: post #89

All the posts below ignored one huge thing. I'm going to provide a list of actions that transformed my life when I was 19 and solved the problems you mentioned. How? These habits increased my confidence, calmed my mind, and increased self-awareness. Habits & systems are everything. Number 1 is the MOST important and is paramount. None of the rest will work without it: 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/nofap . Don't dismiss…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#134

Post by jlevers »

angadkalra wrote: post #89

All the posts below ignored one huge thing. I'm going to provide a list of actions that transformed my life when I was 19 and solved the problems you mentioned. How? These habits increased my confidence, calmed my mind, and increased self-awareness. Habits & systems are everything. Number 1 is the MOST important and is paramount. None of the rest will work without it: 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/nofap . Don't dismiss…

I've tried meditation on multiple occasions, using Headspace and other apps, as well as without any outside input. I've consistently meditated for over a month at times, but after that month, I still _hated_ it. I'm not someone who usually has a hard time getting into the habit of something, but I've never been able to get into meditating, and I never noticed any positive effects.

Do you have any thoughts on my experiences?

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#135

Post by jugjug »

jlevers wrote: post #134
angadkalra wrote: post #89

All the posts below ignored one huge thing. I'm going to provide a list of actions that transformed my life when I was 19 and solved the problems you mentioned. How? These habits increased my confidence, calmed my mind, and increased self-awareness. Habits & systems are everything. Number 1 is the MOST important and is paramount. None of the rest will work without it: 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/nofap . Don't dismiss…

I've tried meditation on multiple occasions, using Headspace and other apps, as well as without any outside input. I've consistently meditated for over a month at times, but after that month, I still _hated_ it. I'm not someone who usually has a hard time getting into the habit of something, but I've never been able to get into meditating, and I never noticed any positive effects. Do you have any thoughts on my exper…

What did you specifically hate about meditation?

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#136

Post by sizzle »

bluedevil2k wrote: post #69
mettamage wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is something about tackling things you DON'T want to do, and getting satisfaction from having accomplished doing it. It's even better than that with regards to exercise. I've been forced to ski by my girlfriend. I've hated it for the first 5 days, I was terrified for my life, literally. I wrote a 10 page document on how not to die since my braking and turning weren't really reliable. Yet, every evening, despi…

Exercise, especially weight lifting and HIIT, raises testosterone levels naturally in the body which will have a definite impact on your confidence and self-esteem levels. Even further, add a good diet and try to lose fat, and you'll get the added benefit of having less of the testosterone convert to estrogen and more converting to DHT, which is the "feel good" androgen.

DHT accelerates male pattern baldness I believe? If you inherited genetic mpb genes and are susceptible to hairloss in crown area.

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#137

Post by sizzle »

ynot269 wrote: post #111
angadkalra wrote: post #89

All the posts below ignored one huge thing. I'm going to provide a list of actions that transformed my life when I was 19 and solved the problems you mentioned. How? These habits increased my confidence, calmed my mind, and increased self-awareness. Habits & systems are everything. Number 1 is the MOST important and is paramount. None of the rest will work without it: 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/nofap . Don't dismiss…

gonna need an explanation on how no fap is related to self esteem doc.

https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/relevant-research-and-articl...

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#138

Post by tomcam »

humanrebar wrote: post #59
tomcam wrote: post #41

I dealt with many of these same situations by thinking it through. Often when I am in a new, challenging situation, I ask myself this: is there anyone dumber than I am who is succeeding in this situation? The answer is invariably yes. That means that I can deal with it through sheer force of will and hard work. It helps knowing that. For example, you say you are a good coder. That’s wonderful. It is something you can…

Given this approach, how do you avoid leaning into the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Or is the point that it's OK to sometimes as long as your expertise actually catches up?

I’m insanely self-critical. I had to look up the Dunning-Kruger effect and believe me, it’s about the last of the (many) problems I’m likely to encounter.

My point is simply that if I see people dumber than I am succeeding in something I’m trying, then I know there’s a path to success for me. Knowing that I can exchange work and time for success is my security blanket.

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#139

Post by tomcam »

jacobush wrote: post #72
humanrebar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this approach, how do you avoid leaning into the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Or is the point that it's OK to sometimes as long as your expertise actually catches up?

I'd argue it's OK even if your expertise does not catch up. The world goes by without you or I being perfect. It's one thing to strive to be better, but what good does it do if you are paralyzed because you question yourself at every turn?

So true. My internal goal is to get to be better than 80% of people in my specialty. I don’t claim to be smarter than the top 5% or so. I just hold onto a work ethic, YT tutorials, and search engine skills. Most people don’t think too much about what they’re doing so you can scrape past the median just by doing that.

Re: Ask HN: Low self confidence and self esteem. How to improve?

#140

Post by tomcam »

serial_dev wrote: post #68
humanrebar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given this approach, how do you avoid leaning into the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Or is the point that it's OK to sometimes as long as your expertise actually catches up?

I would rather err on assessing my cognitive ability greater than it is than feeling worthless and underconfident.

I must reluctantly agree with you, as a guy who’s spent a lot of his life feeling worthless and underconfident.
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