Best products from r/Life

The only thing college teaches you is how to focus and keep on learning. So take the chance and be an artist, not a cog.

Find what you really love to do and build soft skills around it. Do something, anything. Personal projects, tutorials, start discussion groups, workshops, become an expert. This way you will find your tribe, and most likely, a life where you love your work.

Jesus, I feel this.

I was so traumatized by a my first, extended friendzoning that I started sleeping with girls who were interested in me as soon as possible--out of the fear of becoming their friend. That doesn't result in enjoyable relationships and it's a template I'm still unlearning.

Most importantly: having sex and being in relationships has never improved my confidence. It did silence my inner critic for long stretches of time, but if you have a problem with that, therapy is a vastly better option (it was for me).

What has improved my confidence and made me comfortable talking to women for the first time in my life is learning to better feel, express, and work with my own emotions. I think some kind of daily emotional work is critical for men, because we can go days or weeks feeling totally normal, while something traumatic is brewing below the surface. I use Eugene Gendlin's Focusing technique, but somatic therapy or heart-centered meditation or anything else that lets you pop the hood open on your emotions once a day can make a huge difference.

I found that when I had the feelings of worthlessness you describe, setting time aside to feel them, concentrate on them, and try to figure out what to do with them made a huge difference over time, even if it made me feel powerless while I was doing it. Additionally, my negative emotions stopped building up and becoming so extreme because I dealt with them a little bit at a time. It feels counter-productive when you're having a great day to check-in and find out that you're actually horribly sad, or furiously angry, but it gives you chance to deal with those emotions before they become overwhelming.

Additionally, being more aware of my own emotions has made me vastly more aware of women's emotions, which makes talking to them far less scary and more intuitive. It's also let me feel what they feel more, which makes it much easier to give a woman an orgasm.

To me, real confidence doesn't come from any kind of positive self-image, it comes from competence. I've always been confident when speaking about the subjects I'm well versed in (it's one reason I'm such a nerd). When you make a habit of learning your own emotions, you become an expert in yourself, which means you don't have to be so afraid when you open up to a woman, because you actually know what's going to be revealed.

Ma got me an Amazon TV Fire Stick! :) Loving it!

Swearing is not a necessity, you don't need to do it. Swearing is used to add insult, or to add exclamation, over use of swearing is vulgar and makes the perpetrator seem uneducated. Maybe consider a book like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Filthy-English-When-Everyday-Swearing/dp/184627169X/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=0EGHMWN5JNRQRN2X8JGB