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

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

#131
post #73

Bodybuilding. Seriously. Go to the gym and lift heavy. Lift daily. Spend 1.30-2 hours daily lifting weights. Start with a trainer if you have never done any competitive sports before. Fix your diet and eat a lot of protein. I promise you that you will not recognize yourself in 6 months to a year. Both physically and psychologically. IMHO a lot of issues we face in our times are because of the lack of exercise.

Can not upvote this enough. It does get easier, but you have to do it every day, that's the hard part, but it does get easier

The initial days will be the toughest, it's only after a couple of weeks that you will be waiting everyday for your gym time.

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

#133
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily just professional skills, but all skills. I am saying that confidence comes from being able to navigate the world with skills you have learned and not from dwelling on your history (alone or with a therapist) long after you already understand it. Your emotions are too powerful to control and you can't change the past. Literally the only thing you can control is your behavior. What you personally, actu…

I have done this successfully with two things in my life: dating and interviewing. There's some overlap, but I sucked at both. The only way I realized I would ever get better in any reasonable amount of time was to do it over and over and over again. I will say, it is emotionally very difficult and painful, but leads to the most rapid results. Two major things happened to me from massive amounts of repetition: 1) I l…

> lost my fear and could be my authentic self (which is maybe what confidence is)

can you share more about this? material you have read and steps you have taken that helped you with your dating life and more specifically with being more confidence.

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

#134
post #73

Bodybuilding. Seriously. Go to the gym and lift heavy. Lift daily. Spend 1.30-2 hours daily lifting weights. Start with a trainer if you have never done any competitive sports before. Fix your diet and eat a lot of protein. I promise you that you will not recognize yourself in 6 months to a year. Both physically and psychologically. IMHO a lot of issues we face in our times are because of the lack of exercise.

In 2009, I had been depressed for 3 years after I arrived in the United States. I made no friends in that time, and I gained about 70 lbs. High school was rough, then the year before my senior year, I started lifting. I didn't do competition, but I started working out regularly to improve my physic. I can say that just being able to see daily progress and feel in control of something made a difference. I read some self help books, but lifting definitely gave me a boost in my esteem and made me feel that I could make changes in my life and that I wasn't powerless.

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

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done this successfully with two things in my life: dating and interviewing. There's some overlap, but I sucked at both. The only way I realized I would ever get better in any reasonable amount of time was to do it over and over and over again. I will say, it is emotionally very difficult and painful, but leads to the most rapid results. Two major things happened to me from massive amounts of repetition: 1) I l…

> lost my fear and could be my authentic self (which is maybe what confidence is) can you share more about this? material you have read and steps you have taken that helped you with your dating life and more specifically with being more confidence.

If you focus on being FUN to be around, dating won't be a problem. Are you fun? Or do you talk about serious things all the time and put that weight on everyone?

Figure out how to make people laugh, which starts with enjoying laughing yourself. Get very good at pointing out that things are funny and having a good laugh. Laugh at yourself.

That will go a long way in dating.

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

#136
Often when someone says they want more self-esteem, they want to stop feeling bad. You have an ugly idea of who you are and think that replacing it with a not-ugly version would be good. People try to solve the problem by building themselves up, in practical ways in reality or in their minds. Then they chase a bunch of external things in order to keep that esteem up when it seems to work for a while.

If you get into a healthy space, though, you realize you will always feel a little bad/good about circumstances, but your _core_ sense of "feeling good" doesn't need to be connected to that stuff. It's actually not. Mostly, you can shed the major part of depression, anxiety, and worrying about your "self" and whether it is esteemed, just by changing how you breath, how your spine is positioned, and a few other things that can be done pretty quickly. Quickly, but lots of practice makes it a lot better.

I recommend taking the Inner Engineering program at ishafoundation.org. It is basically meditation and "yoga", but there is not really the "exercise" thing that people do in the US. I'm not into New Age things, or trying to have "beliefs", and certainly not interested in following gurus or donating money to anyone. I spent 4 days at their ashram and got a set of skills over a year ago that makes everything in life easier. Nobody ever tried to sell me anything afterward. I know 4 other people closely who have done it, and kept with it for years afterward, and met a few dozen others from the class that I keep up with. I know they have had classes in the Bay Area in the last year too, if India is a bit far away. I walked out of the first day of class there "in the zone" and spent a ton of time there afterward. It's really great.

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

#137
Everybody suffers from low self-esteem at some or the other point of life. Recognize what skills you think you lack and work on them and eventually you'll pick other skills along the way. To start off with this, you've got to be optimistic even in the worst of situations.

This worked wonders for me!

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

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done this successfully with two things in my life: dating and interviewing. There's some overlap, but I sucked at both. The only way I realized I would ever get better in any reasonable amount of time was to do it over and over and over again. I will say, it is emotionally very difficult and painful, but leads to the most rapid results. Two major things happened to me from massive amounts of repetition: 1) I l…

> lost my fear and could be my authentic self (which is maybe what confidence is) can you share more about this? material you have read and steps you have taken that helped you with your dating life and more specifically with being more confidence.

The major step was deciding to do a ton of dating in a shorter period of time. I would go on 3-4 dates a week. It's exhausting to do this, so I could only manage this pace for a month or two before taking a few weeks off and trying again.

What I found is that the repetition allows you to reframe the situation. I started to no longer 'get my hopes up' or really anticipate the date, so that I wouldn't have an agenda coming into it. Instead it was much more casual: just get to know them and see if there's a good vibe or connection.

I want to point out that this is different than trying to sleep with a bunch of women. I was really going for connection, and if you go on a lot of dates you start being able to tell pretty quickly if there's a connection.

I really do think there's something to essentially 'brute forcing' your way to getting better at something. Make it so your primary goal is learning and getting better, and, remarkably, you will.

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