This might sound like the cheesy kind of advice your parents might have given you, but confidence can indeed get you pretty much whatever you want—that and being yourself.
If you want to get a date, succeed in your career or otherwise take any aspect of your life to the next level, then boosting your confidence is one of the best ways to accomplish that. Here’s why…
What Confidence Really Means
If you have ever met an alpha male or a woman who seems to have everything under control, then you might have noticed that they are usually very confident. The truth is that the whole reason they appear so successful is that confidence. That’s because confidence sends a powerful signal – it says, ‘I consider myself to be a catch.’
Speaking in evolutionary terms, confidence suggests an excellent potential mate or a superior competitor. Even if someone is short, poorly dressed, and unappealing – if they are supremely confident, then it will seem as though they know something you don’t. The assumption is that they must have a reason to be that confident.
And thus, we instantly assume that this person is somehow our superior: we should try to impress them or be more like them. That’s why we gravitate toward confident people, want to date them, and want to be liked by them.
Many people don’t realize the importance of confidence, and they think it is enough to be nice. They assume that by acting nice, they will get people to like them, and they can overcome their looks, stature, or status.
But if you don’t have any self-confidence and act very nice, this can backfire: it starts to seem as though you want something and that you are being a creep to get it.
Conversely, if you act a little less needy, show yourself to be highly capable and impressive, and then chat to someone in a friendly and open manner… then people will be won over by your charm and your appeal. This niceness seems much more genuine because you appear like you don’t need help from everyone.
So guys: stop trying to win the girl by being nice.
Employees, stop trying to get the job by being self-deprecating.
Act like you know your worth and then layer niceness on top of that. That is the winning combination!
How to Think Faster and Multitask Better
If you want to upgrade your brain like Eddie Mora from Limitless, unfortunately, you won’t find it as easy as taking a single pill. Instead, you’re going to have to look at more arduous and lengthy strategies, including such things as brain training or improving your overall health.
If you choose to go the brain-training route, though, there is one especially effective and ‘easy’ method that you may find that helps you to see the kinds of results you’re looking for. That method is to focus your training on working memory. But what does that mean?
What is Working Memory?
The traditional view of memory splits out capacity for storing information into three separate categories. Those were: working memory, short-term memory, and long-term memory.
Short-term memory was described as containing all the information you remember for a while, but that would ultimately be ‘sent to trash.’ This includes such things as people’s names or what you had for breakfast. Long-term memory, meanwhile, consists of all that information that you will remember indefinitely: the names of your friends, the night you proposed, how to tell the time, etc.
Based on this description, working memory was effectively your brain’s equivalent of RAM. This is where information would be stored that would only be required for a concise amount of time. The most famous example is a phone number that you will write down.
In turn, the working memory – could be broken down into a ‘visuospatial scratchpad’ where we would visualize things. The ‘phonological loop’ where we would repeat things to ourselves.
Today though, psychologists recognize that working memory has much more in-common with visualization in general. This is our ability to internalize information, whether memory, imagination, or something else.
In short, this is our ability to create a representation of the world, whether for predictive purposes or something else. This means keeping track of what’s been said and what’s next in the conversation. In sports, it means knowing where everyone is on the pitch. When working, it’s what allows us to multitask and switch between different things. This is nothing short of crucial for your ability to work quickly and effectively.
How to Train It
The good news is that there is a proven method for increasing working memory, and that is to train using something called the N Backtest. Use this, and you can gradually improve your ability to hold information in your mind with incredible results.